TIOBE Index July 2026: Rust Enters the Top 10 for the First Time as Index Marks 25th Anniversary
Rust cracked the TIOBE Index top 10 for the first time in July 2026, climbing from 18th to 10th place as the 25-year-old index marks its anniversary.
Overview
Rust has entered the TIOBE Index top 10 for the first time in the popularity index’s 25-year history, rising from 18th place in July 2025 to 10th place in the July 2026 edition, according to TIOBE. The milestone arrived in the same edition that marks the index’s own 25th anniversary, and InfoWorld independently confirmed Rust “cracked the top 10” in its July 6 coverage of the rankings.
What We Know
Rust closed July 2026 with a rating of 1.34 percent, up 0.33 percentage points year-over-year, placing it 10th among the languages TIOBE tracks, according to TIOBE. The rise displaced Delphi/Object Pascal, which held the 10th spot in July 2025 and slipped to 11th this month with a 1.29 percent rating, a 0.48-point decline, per the same TIOBE rankings table.
TIOBE chief executive officer Paul Jansen attributed the climb to Rust’s design. “Rust’s growing popularity can largely be attributed to its strong focus on memory safety while still generating extremely fast code,” Jansen wrote in the July index commentary, according to TIOBE. He added that Rust “is widely regarded as a direct competitor to C and C++, both of which continue to struggle with the challenges of explicit memory management and are therefore often considered less safe.” Jansen also noted that “the C and C++ communities are actively working on making their languages safer.” “Time will tell whether these efforts will pay off in time,” he wrote, according to the same TIOBE commentary. InfoWorld independently quoted Jansen making the identical statement, attributing it to him by name as TIOBE’s chief executive.
Rust’s ascent is part of a broader reshuffling atop the July 2026 index. Python remained number one at 18.94 percent even as its rating fell 8.03 percentage points year-over-year, according to TIOBE. C climbed to second place at 10.86 percent, swapping positions with C++, which dropped to third at 9.12 percent. Java, C#, and JavaScript held their fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-place spots respectively. SQL jumped from 13th to eighth place with a 1.71 percent rating, and R rose from 15th to ninth at 1.69 percent, both per TIOBE’s rankings table.
InfoWorld also reported that Rust reached the top 10 of a second, independently run index: the Pypl Popularity of Programming Language Index, which measures how often language tutorials are searched for on Google. Rust placed ninth on Pypl’s July 2026 list with a 2.06 percent share, behind Python, Java, C/C++, R, JavaScript, Objective-C, PHP, and C#, according to InfoWorld’s report.
The July edition doubles as a 25th-anniversary milestone for TIOBE itself. “Three of today’s top five languages, i.e. C, C++, and Java, were already among the leaders 25 years ago,” Jansen wrote, according to TIOBE, adding that “Python emerged as a top-five language roughly a decade ago, while C# joined the top five about 15 years ago.” Jansen also announced a new “Programming Language Flowchart” designed to help developers choose a language for a specific project, which TIOBE said would be published on its website “next week.”
As The Machine Herald previously reported, Rust was still sitting outside the top 10 as recently as May 2026, ranked 15th with a 1.14 percent rating. The jump to 10th in July continues a climb that TIOBE’s own commentary traces back at least one more month: “Last month, we reported that Rust was setting new records,” Jansen wrote, according to TIOBE.
What We Don’t Know
TIOBE’s ratings are calculated from search-engine query volume across sites including Google, Bing, Amazon, and Wikipedia, according to InfoWorld, meaning the index measures search interest and course or vendor activity rather than direct measures of production usage such as job postings or lines of code deployed. TIOBE’s own commentary cautions that “the index measures the popularity of programming languages, but it does not tell you which language is the best choice for a particular project or application,” according to TIOBE. Neither TIOBE’s commentary nor InfoWorld’s coverage specifies which particular releases, tools, or company adoption decisions drove Rust’s rating increase this month.
Analysis
Rust’s arrival in the TIOBE top 10 caps a rise the index has tracked in stages over recent months, moving from outside the top 10 in May to breaking in this July. That the milestone lands in the same edition marking TIOBE’s 25th anniversary gives it added symbolic weight: the index’s own commentary points out that the composition of its top five has been remarkably stable, with C, C++, and Java holding leadership positions across the full quarter-century of tracking. Rust’s arrival at 10th, paired with its parallel entry into the Pypl top 10, suggests the language’s growth in search and tutorial interest is not confined to a single measurement methodology — though, as TIOBE itself cautions, neither index speaks directly to production deployment.