Abstract: Qt Group has announced a significant expansion of the Qt platform and ecosystem.
At the Qt World Summit in May 2025, Qt Group unveiled an innovative bridging technology aimed at facilitating seamless integration of Qt with various programming languages.
The Origin of the New Bridging Technology
Qt’s origins trace back to the C++ ecosystem. In 2010, with the introduction of QML and Qt Quick, Qt opened a new chapter in UI development using modern declarative languages. However, accessing specific APIs and data outside the QML engine in Qt Quick applications traditionally required C++ code.
In 2018, PySide became part of Qt 5, known as PySide2, and later evolved into PySide6 in Qt 6. Today, it forms the foundation of Qt for Python. With Qt for Python, developers can use the Python programming language instead of C++ to develop Qt applications and utilize the Shiboken generator to create new bindings for C++ APIs.
The Birth of Qt Bridges
By the end of 2023, Qt began exploring how to promote Qt, especially Qt Quick as a leading UI/UX framework, beyond the C++ and Python communities. The goal was to enable new users to leverage existing codebases and preferred programming languages, reducing the refactoring workload required for Qt integration.
Inspired by software architecture patterns that separate back-end from front-end, and drawing from several internal hackathon prototypes, Qt developed the concept of a new bridging technology. In this model, code written in different languages serves as the back-end implementing business logic, while the front-end consists of UI code written in QML, utilizing the Qt Quick UI framework.
By May 2024, Qt confirmed that this direction could yield practical and meaningful results. The selected hackathon prototypes were highly aligned with this direction and helped accelerate the initiation process. By spring 2025, after 3 to 4 iterations, Qt had established a working baseline for bridging five different programming languages with Qt Quick.
Qt decided to name this approach and bridging technology “Qt Bridges.” While this is not the first time Qt has used the term “bridge,” it does not conflict but rather confirms the applicability of the term in describing various similar efforts within Qt and its tools.
Initial Supported Programming Languages
With the new bridging technology, Qt plans to provide initial integration for five selected languages: C#, Kotlin/Java, Python, Rust, and Swift. Additionally, Qt plans to open and document some private QML APIs so that future developers can build additional language integrations.
In terms of artificial intelligence, the Qt AI Assistant will add support for large language models such as Claude 3.7, Sonnet, and DeepSeek v3, further enhancing development efficiency. This upgrade aims to expand the Qt ecosystem to meet diverse development needs.
Through a technology-neutral transformation, Qt will no longer be limited to a toolkit for C++ developers or interface specialists but will become a universal engine driving software innovation.
More information will be announced in the second half of 2025.
Author: Action Daxiong
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