WebGPU could bring AAA games to browsers in 2027
WebGPU has cleared its last big hurdle. The new GPU API is now enabled in stable releases of Chrome and Edge on Windows, macOS and ChromeOS, Chrome on Android, Firefox on Windows and macOS, and Safari on macOS, iOS, iPadOS and visionOS. In practice that gives developers a single GPU API they can target across all major browser engines.
WebGPU is the successor to WebGL and is built on top of modern native APIs like Direct3D 12, Metal and Vulkan rather than OpenGL ES. It exposes a low level model for buffers, textures and command buffers, plus its own shading language WGSL. That design gives engines more predictable performance and better access to current GPU features than WebGL ever did.
Source: Projectprismatic
The API is not just for drawing triangles. WebGPU includes compute shaders so JavaScript and WebAssembly code can run data parallel workloads such as physics, simulation or machine learning directly on the GPU. Libraries like ONNX Runtime Web and transformers.js already tap into this to run model inference in the browser on the client GPU, which cuts latency and keeps data local.
In other words, you can run games, or even AI models directly in the browser using local GPU power.
Source: Spacelancers
Developer Konstantin Paulus (CEO od Diffusion Studio, which focuses on browser rendering) argues that this reach will shift the kind of apps that live in a tab over the next few years. He expects professional motion graphics and 2D video tools to move into WebGPU around 2026 and later, once creators trust browser based pipelines. His timeline puts full scale AAA games and advanced 3D creation tools in the 2027 window, followed by consumer facing AI inference that runs locally in the browser around 2028. Those dates are guesses, but they give a sense of how long it takes to build full products on top of a fresh low level API.
Source: WebGPU Sponza Demo
For now, WebGPU will sit mainly in the hands of engine authors and tool developers who already target multiple platforms. With Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari all on board, they can treat WebGPU and its native implementations like Dawn and wgpu as a single cross platform layer for graphics and compute. The next phase is less about spec work and more about engines, editors and games that show ordinary users what that GPU access in the browser is good for.
WebBPU Browser and OS availability
- Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium-based browsers:
- WebGPU is available on Windows (with Direct3D 12), macOS, and ChromeOS starting with Chrome and Edge version 113.
- Support for Android was added in Chrome version 121 for devices running at least Android 12, and with Qualcomm/ARM GPUs.
- Support for Linux and expanded support for existing platforms is in progress.
- Firefox:
- WebGPU is available on Windows as of Firefox 141.
- WebGPU is available in macOS Tahoe 26 on ARM64 machines, as of Firefox 145.
- Support for Linux, Android, and Intel-based Macs is in progress.
- Safari:
- WebGPU is available in macOS Tahoe 26, iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and visionOS 26.
Source: Chrome