Rich Communication Service (RCS) – February 2026 Publications

The Rich Communication Services (RCS) Universal Profile 4.0 has now been published. This specification defines the service experience and user experience for the features that are part of RCS and it relies on the technical enablers that are defined in other RCS-related specifications some of which are updated to support the enhancements brought as part of this new Universal Profile version and are covered on this page.

The major step forward covered by these latest RCS specifications is that they define the user experience and technical enablers for setting up interoperable video calls from any RCS messaging conversation including up to 32 participants. Next to that, the new features that they bring will allow users to bring formatting to the text messages that they send through RCS and for them to exchange higher quality media files. Also when interacting with businesses their experience will be improved through new features such as streaming video in Rich Cards, more user-friendly icons for suggested actions to open a URL and more control for the business senders on whether such actions would open in a webview within the RCS client, in a webbrowser or in a dedicated application if that has been installed on the device. They also improve efficiency and robustness to the handling of deep links to chatbots and business messaging senders and chatbot information in general.