On March 19, 2026, the OpenTelemetry Specification project merged PR #4938, deprecating OpenTracing compatibility requirements in the specification.
This change updates the specification to match where the ecosystem already is: OpenTracing has been archived for years, and new integrations are expected to use native OpenTelemetry APIs and SDKs instead of building on OpenTracing shim requirements.
This is a deprecation of specification requirements, not an immediate removal of compatibility material and not a requirement to remove existing shim artifacts right away.