The TIOBE ranking for October 2026 does not have an obvious star at the top — the top seven positions are identical to those from a year ago. The interesting movement is further down: Julia returns to the top 20 after three years of absence, while Dart and OCaml are knocking on the door. Equally important, TIOBE changed its methodology this month, making comparisons with last year more delicate than usual.
Julia, back in the top 20
Julia climbs to 18th place from 30th in October 2025, with a rating of 0.88% (+0.42%). The last time it made the top 20 was three years ago, and many attributed that appearance to a wave of transient enthusiasm. Paul Jansen, CEO of TIOBE, believes that this time the popularity seems more firmly anchored.
The explanation lies in a real gap in the ecosystem. Python is accessible and dominates numerical computing, but becomes a bottleneck when performance matters. C++ is fast but requires much more effort and works at a low level of abstraction. Julia tries to offer both at once: a friendly syntax designed for mathematics and science, plus JIT compilation that brings it close to native code speed. For research, modeling, and simulation, the combination is hard to ignore.
It remains to be seen if Julia will keep its place. The difference from 21st place (Ada, 0.82%) is only a few hundredths of a percent, so any monthly fluctuation could push it out again.
Dart and OCaml knocking on the door
Dart jumps from 41st to 27th. Almost all of its popularity comes from Flutter, Google's cross-platform UI toolkit, and the language has been hovering near the top 20 for some time.
OCaml is the real surprise: from 38th to 26th. TIOBE links the growth to usage in real-time trading systems and parsing technologies — two niches where type safety and predictable performance matter enormously. A functional language nearly three decades old climbing 12 places in one month is not something we see often.
Top 20 — October 2026
| Rank Oct. 2026 | Rank Oct. 2025 | Language | Rating | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Python | 19.23% | -5.23% |
| 2 | 2 | C | 11.33% | +2.04% |
| 3 | 3 | C++ | 8.87% | +0.04% |
| 4 | 4 | Java | 8.41% | +0.06% |
| 5 | 5 | C# | 3.79% | -3.15% |
| 6 | 6 | JavaScript | 2.77% | -0.64% |
| 7 | 7 | Visual Basic | 2.20% | -1.02% |
| 8 | 13 | R | 2.06% | +0.55% |
| 9 | 10 | SQL | 1.97% | +0.20% |
| 10 | 16 | Rust | 1.44% | +0.24% |
| 11 | 8 | Go | 1.39% | -0.53% |
| 12 | 14 | PHP | 1.26% | -0.12% |
| 13 | 11 | Fortran | 1.12% | -0.58% |
| 14 | 22 | Swift | 1.03% | +0.09% |
| 15 | 18 | Scratch | 0.97% | -0.18% |
| 16 | 23 | COBOL | 0.89% | +0.03% |
| 17 | 12 | Perl | 0.88% | -0.78% |
| 18 | 30 | Julia | 0.88% | +0.42% |
| 19 | 9 | Delphi/Object Pascal | 0.83% | -1.03% |
| 20 | 17 | MATLAB | 0.83% | -0.33% |
Source: TIOBE Index, www.tiobe.com.
Methodology change: Chinese searches included
Starting this month, TIOBE also includes search terms in Mandarin Chinese: besides the classic query "<language> programming", the index now also searches the Chinese equivalent. The argument is simple: Mandarin is the second most spoken language in the world after English, and ignoring it underrepresented the programming communities in China.
The weight of searches in Chinese is 44.2% of that in English, calculated based on the number of native and non-native speakers of the two languages. As a side effect, long-term historical data is temporarily unavailable on the TIOBE site until recalculation.
Why it matters: some of the movements in this month’s ranking may reflect the methodology change, not just real popularity changes. A language with a strong community in China may rise; one used predominantly in the English-speaking world may lose relative weight. This year’s figures should be read with this caveat.
Other notable points
- Python remains the leader with 19.23%, but loses 5.23% compared to last year — continuing a visible trend throughout the year. The lead over 2nd place remains huge.
- C consolidates in 2nd place with 11.33% and the largest increase in the top 20 (+2.04%).
- Rust stays in the top 10, at 10th place, confirming the threshold reached in July. A year ago it was 16th.
- Go falls out of the top 10 — dropping from 8th to 11th. Rust and Go have practically swapped positions.
- R climbs from 13th to 8th, and SQL from 10th to 9th — data and their analysis remain a strong theme.
- Swift and COBOL rise 7-8 places (to 14th and 16th respectively). COBOL’s growth in 2026 sounds paradoxical, but inherited banking and government systems do not disappear.
- Delphi/Object Pascal crashes from 9th to 19th (-1.03%), and Perl drops from 12th to 17th.
- TypeScript only at 38th place — a result that shows once again that TIOBE measures the volume of content about a language on the web, not how much it is used in real projects.
What this means for you as a .NET developer
C# remains in 5th place, but its rating drops to 3.79%, with -3.15% compared to October 2025 — the second largest drop in the top 20 after Python. The contrast is all the more visible since C# was named Programming Language of the Year in 2025, an award it also received in 2023.
Before drawing conclusions, two things are worth considering. The first is the above: the new methodology redistributes weights, and part of the decline may come from how C# is represented in Chinese searches, not from a real decrease in usage. The second: TIOBE ratings are relative — when C and R increase, someone else must lose percentage points.
In the long term, C#’s position is remarkably stable: 5th place in the annual average for 2026 and 2021, 4th in 2016, 5th in 2011. The .NET ecosystem has remained consistently elite for two decades, regardless of hype waves around it.
Lower in the ranking, the Microsoft family also appears: Visual Basic at 7th, PowerShell at 42nd, Transact-SQL at 43rd, X++ at 47th, and F# in the 51-100 group. For a .NET developer, the practical message remains the same as in July: C# is a solid base, and a second skill in a language from the data area (SQL, Python) or performance and memory safety (Rust) remains the best complementary investment.
Conclusion
October 2026 is a month of movement on the periphery, not at the top. Julia, Dart, and OCaml show that specialized niches — numerical computing, cross-platform UI, financial systems — can still produce rising languages. And the methodology change reminds us that any ranking is, after all, a lens, not a mirror.
If you missed the previous analysis, you can find it here: TIOBE Index July 2026: Rust enters the top 10 for the first time in history.
