If you’ve been building websites for a while, you probably have some established opinions about CSS. It’s the obvious choice for design and layout, but once things get more interactive than a basic animation, most developers instinctively reach for JavaScript. However, thanks to an ever-evolving platform, “CSS for design and JavaScript for interactivity” no longer has to be the default when building features for the web.
Modern CSS is now powerful enough to handle complex animations and user interactions that used to require custom scripts. In this article, we’ll explore some of the latest features landing in CSS and how they can simplify your development workflow while still giving you the level of interactivity you’re used to with JavaScript.
Imagine a world where you can build fully customizable <select> elements without writing any JavaScript, or create a scrollable carousel with interactive markers without calculating scrollLeft or wiring up multiple event listeners. That’s exactly what’s becoming possible with these new CSS features, and it’s definitely something to look forward to.
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What’s new in CSS in 2026?
Let’s take a look at some of these latest features and how we can implement them in our codebase.
Note: Most of these features are very new and still rolling out across browsers, so they aren’t suited for production use just yet. For a deeper dive into how these features work, check out the CSS Wrapped 2025 article from the Chrome DevRel team: