802.11

WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORKS

The Working Group for WLAN Standards

Upcoming sessions

2026 May IEEE 802 Wireless Interim Session May 10–15, 2026 Hilton Antwerp Old Town Antwerp, Belgium Register to attend (in-person or remote)

The meetings between now and the upcoming session will be held by teleconference.

Current and recent ballots and comment collections

ID Type Stage Project Draft Open Close Status
P802.11bi-I SA Ballot Initial P802.11bi D4.0 2026-02-11 2026-03-13 Open: Closed: 91% approval
CC52 Comment Collection P802.11bt D0.2 Opens soon
For WG ballots, close is at 23:59 ET on the date indicated.

Recent activities

At the 2026 March plenary session, 802.11 made progress in the following areas:

  • The 802.11 WG has a new WG 1st Vice Chair: Alfred Asterjadhi. Robert Stacey continues as WG chair and Stephen McCann continues as WG 2nd Vice Chair.
  • The working group and the 802 LMSC approved the formation of an AI Offload study group. The SG will produce a project authorization request for a standard amendment to facilitate the offloading of compute intense AI inference tasks to edge AI Wi-Fi Access Points and other Wi-Fi enabled edge compute devices.
  • The Wireless Next Generation (WNG) standing committee continued to review submissions on the direction for the generation that follows 802.11bn (Wi-Fi 8).
  • TGmf (Maintenance revision) started comment resolution on the WG recirc ballot on D2.0.
  • TGbi (Enhanced Privacy Protection) has completed its WG balloting and initiated SA ballot on D4.0.
  • TGbn (Ultra-High Reliability, aka Wi-Fi 8) has resolved around 60% of the comments from their initial ballot on D1.0. They expect to go to ballot again with D2.0 in May 2026.
  • TGbp (Ambient Power Communications) continues to improve their draft with an initial working group ballot on D1.0 expected in May 2026.
  • TGbt (Post-Quantum Cryptography) will collect comments on D0.2 and expect an initial ballot on D1.0 coming out of the May 2026 session.
  • TGbq (Integrated mmWave) continues to review technical contributions.
  • The AUTO TIG has completed their report on the automotive use of Wi-Fi.

A more detailed report is available here.

802.11 members Jerome Henry, Brian Hart, Binita Gupta and Malcolm Smith have written a detailed guide to IEEE Std 802.11be-2024, known in the industry as Wi-Fi 7.

Recent standards approvals

IEEE Std 802.11bf™-2025 was published on September 26, 2025.

IEEE Std 802.11bk™-2025 was published on September 5, 2025.

IEEE Std 802.11be™-2024 was published on July 22, 2025.

IEEE Std 802.11bh™-2024 was published on June 3, 2025.

IEEE Std 802.11™-2024 was published on April 28, 2025.

"Click Here" for IEEE 802 Free Standards

The IEEE has made available IEEE 802 standards for free download. Under this program, a standard may be downloaded for free six months after the initial publication of the standard. All relevant IEEE 802.11 Standard, Amendments, and Recommended Practices are listed.

Access to 802.11 draft standards

Draft standards are available from a number of sources:

  • If you are a voting 802.11 member, go to the members' area and log in using the 802.11 members ID and password supplied to you by the 802.11 officers.  Contact Robert Stacey if you have lost this. During an 802.11 session, attendees may access 802.11 draft standards from a local fileserver, regardless of their membership status.
  • If you are an active member of one of the other 802 groups, you may be able to access the 802.11 members' area using the same credentials used to access your own group. If this doesn't work, ask your group's Chair to request access from the 802.11 Chair (Robert Stacey).
  • Draft IEEE standards are, from time to time, made available for purchase using the IEEE store or Techstreet.

IEEE standards development guide

The IEEE-SA has created an easy to use Online Standards Development web site that has a wealth of information that details the whole standards process flow, from creation of the initial PAR, to balloting to final draft, and beyond. It even includes, tutorials, and online forms of the various processes evolved. This site is recommended for all Members and Chairs involved.

Upcoming meetings

A google calendar (embedded below) is maintained for 802.11 meetings.

You can import the calendar as an iCal file, or use the "Add to Google Calendar" at the bottom right of the calendar below.

The 802 calendar, which contains the 802 meetings and also rolls up the working group calendars, is available here.