Rust Breaks Into TIOBE Top 10 for the First Time (July 2026)
In the July 2026 TIOBE Programming Language Index, Rust climbs to 10th place with a 1.34% rating, marking its first appearance in the top ten, while the report explains the index’s methodology, historical language trends, and TIOBE’s upcoming language‑selection flowchart.
Rust language has for the first time entered the TIOBE Programming Language Popularity ranking top 10.
According to the TIOBE ranking released on July 5, 2026, Rust occupies the 10th position with a score of 1.34%.
“Rust’s growing popularity is largely due to its ability to keep code execution extremely fast while also emphasizing memory safety,” says Paul Jansen, CEO of the software quality service provider TIOBE.
Jansen adds that Rust is widely regarded as a direct competitor to C and C++. Those languages still face many challenges in explicit memory management and are therefore often considered less safe, although the C and C++ communities are actively working to improve safety.
Among the current top‑five languages, three have been dominant for 25 years: C, C++ and Java. Python entered the top five about ten years ago, and C# did so roughly fifteen years ago.
This month also marks the 25th anniversary of the TIOBE Index.
After reviewing user feedback, TIOBE plans to launch a new “Programming Language Flowchart” next week to help developers choose the most suitable language for specific use cases while tracking popularity trends.
TIOBE July TOP 20 Programming Languages
TOP 10 Programming Language TIOBE Index Trend (2002‑2026)
Rank 21‑50 Programming Languages
(Visual) FoxPro, ActionScript, Apex, Applescript, Awk, Bash, bc, BCPL, BlitzMax, Bourne shell, C shell, C++/CLI, CL (OS/400), Clojure, CoffeeScript, cT, ECMAScript, Elixir, Erlang, F#, FreeBASIC, GAMS, Groovy, Io, J, JScript, JScript.NET, Logo, MDX, MQL5, MS‑DOS batch, OpenCL, PL/I, Q, Ring, RPG, S, Scheme, Solidity, SQR, Structured Text, Tcl, V, Vala/Genie, Wolfram, XBase++, Xojo, XPL, XSLT, Z shell
The TIOBE Programming Community Index measures programming language popularity and is updated monthly. Its rankings are based on data from engineers, courses, and third‑party providers, using popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu.
The index can be used to check whether your programming skills keep pace with the times, or to decide which language to adopt when building a new software system.
It is important to note that the TIOBE Index does not represent the quality of a language nor the amount of code written in it.
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