Release Date: Dec. 7, 2020

This is the first maintenance release of Python 3.9

Python 3.9.1 is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations. We've made 282 changes since 3.9.0 which is a significant amount. To compare, 3.8.1 only saw 192 commits since 3.8.0.

Installer news

3.9.1 is the first version of Python to support macOS 11 Big Sur. With Xcode 11 and later it is now possible to build “Universal 2” binaries which work on Apple Silicon. We are providing such an installer as the macos11.0 variant. This installer can be deployed back to older versions, tested down to OS X 10.9. As we are waiting for an updated version of pip, please consider the macos11.0 installer experimental.

This work would not have been possible without the effort of Ronald Oussoren, Ned Deily, and Lawrence D’Anna from Apple. Thank you!

This is the first version of Python to default to the 64-bit installer on Windows. The installer now also actively disallows installation on Windows 7. Python 3.9 is incompatible with this unsupported version of Windows.

Major new features of the 3.9 series, compared to 3.8

Some of the new major new features and changes in Python 3.9 are:

• PEP 573, Module State Access from C Extension Methods
• PEP 584, Union Operators in dict
• PEP 585, Type Hinting Generics In Standard Collections
• PEP 593, Flexible function and variable annotations
• PEP 602, Python adopts a stable annual release cadence
• PEP 614, Relaxing Grammar Restrictions On Decorators
• PEP 615, Support for the IANA Time Zone Database in the Standard Library
• PEP 616, String methods to remove prefixes and suffixes
• PEP 617, New PEG parser for CPython
• BPO 38379, garbage collection does not block on resurrected objects;
• BPO 38692, os.pidfd_open added that allows process management without races and signals;
• BPO 39926, Unicode support updated to version 13.0.0;
• BPO 1635741, when Python is initialized multiple times in the same process, it does not leak memory anymore;
• A number of Python builtins (range, tuple, set, frozenset, list, dict) are now sped up using PEP 590 vectorcall;
• A number of Python modules (_abc, audioop, _bz2, _codecs, _contextvars, _crypt, _functools, _json, _locale, operator, resource, time, _weakref) now use multiphase initialization as defined by PEP 489;
• A number of standard library modules (audioop, ast, grp, _hashlib, pwd, _posixsubprocess, random, select, struct, termios, zlib) are now using the stable ABI defined by PEP 384.

You can find a more comprehensive list in this release's "What's New" document.

More resources

• Online Documentation
• PEP 596, 3.9 Release Schedule
• Report bugs at https://bugs.python.org.
• Help fund Python and its community.

And now for something completely different

Arthur (Eric Idle): Good morning, I'd like to buy a book please.
Bookseller (John Cleese): Oh, well I'm afraid we don't have any. (trying to hide them)
Arthur: I'm sorry?
Bookseller: We don't have any books. We're fresh out of them. Good morning.
Arthur: What are all these?
Bookseller: All what? Oh! All these, ah ah ha ha. You're referring to these... books.
Arthur: Yes.
Bookseller: They're um... they're all sold. Good morning.
Arthur: What all of them?
Bookseller: Every single man-Jack of them. Not a single one of them in an unsold state. Good morning.
Arthur: Wait a minute, there's something going on here.
Bookseller: What, where? You didn't see anything did you?
Arthur: No, but I think there's something going on here.
Bookseller: No no, well there's nothing going on here at all (shouts off) and he didn't see anything. Good morning.
Arthur: Oh, well, I'd like to buy a copy of an 'Illustrated History of False Teeth'.
Bookseller: My God you've got guts.
Arthur: What?
Bookseller: (pulling gun) Just how much do you know?
Arthur: What about?
Bookseller: Are you from the British Dental Association?
Arthur: No I'm a tobacconist.
Bookseller: Stay where you are. You'll never leave this bookshop alive.
Arthur: Why not?
Bookseller: You know too much, my dental friend.
Arthur: I don't know anything.
Bookseller: Come clean. You're a dentist aren't you.
Arthur: No, I'm a tobacconist.
Bookseller: A tobacconist who just happens to be buying a book on teeth?

Full Changelog