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Subscribe Python 3.14 garbage collection rigamarole

Python 3.14.0 introduced a new incremental garbage collector. But reports of higher memory usage caused the Python team to revert the garbage collector changes in 3.14.5. We investigate how memory management works in Python and workloads that perform best and worst for the incremental garbage collector.

By Phil Eaton · June 6, 2026

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Python 3.14.5 was just released and is the current latest stable version of Python. Python 3.14.0 (released in October, 2025) changed the garbage collector (GC) from traditional generational garbage collection to incremental garbage collection.…