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 ...
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 ...
LWN.net

Python 3, ASCII, and UTF-8

The dreaded UnicodeDecodeError exception is one of the signature "features" of Python 3. It is raised when the language encounters a byte sequence that it cannot ...
Phoronix

Python 3.15 Released With Experimental JIT Compiler Running Faster

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Handling CSV Character Encoding, Dates, and Numbers Correctly: A Practical Introduction to Python

When you start working with CSVs in Python, almost everyone hits the same wall. It looks garbled when opened in Excel. Dates ...