Python 3.15 defaults to UTF-8 for character encoding. Changes on Windows

On October 9, 2026, Python 3.15.0 was released. When opening a file with open() without specifying a character encoding, it now reads and writes in UTF-8 regardless of OS settings.The impact is ...
LWN.net

Python 3, ASCII, and UTF-8

I'm against making magic "unicode" strings with unspecified encoding and then forcing everything to use these strings. The idea behind “Unicode” strings is that they are not encoded at all (so much ...
heise online

Python 3.15 released: Lazy imports, UTF-8 and new data types

Python 3.15.0 is available. The new major version of the programming language was released on October 9, 2026, and brings changes to the language, the CPython reference interpreter, and the standard ...

[Python Introduction Episode 12] How to Read and Use Saved Files: Let's Call Important Data into Your Program

In this article, we will learn how to read and utilize the text files you saved on your computer in the previous lesson using Python.Once you can do this, you will be able to load daily notes or past ...
BetaNews

Python 3.15 arrives with lazy imports, UTF-8 by default and a faster JIT

Python 3.15 reached stable status on Oct. 9, 2026, according to its official release page. Its headline changes put UTF-8 in charge of text encoding by default and introduce an opt-in lazy keyword for ...
Ars Technica

Help with writing a UTF-8 text file and getting it automatically recognised as UTF-8

I'm working on a program that is writing a UTF-8 text file. This process works fine. What doesn't work fine is that TextEdit.app (and others) does not recognise it automatically as a UTF-8 text file, ...