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Java Holds No 3 in Tiobe Index as C# Wins 2025 Programming Language of the Year
Java held its position near the top of a closely watched ranking of programming language popularity, even as Microsoft’s C# won Tiobe’s Programming Language of the Year honors for 2025, highlighting a continuing contest for influence in business software development.
Java ranked third in the Tiobe Index in January 2026, with a rating of 8.71%, behind Python at 22.61% and C at 10.99%. C++ followed closely in fourth at 8.67%, while C# placed fifth at 7.39%, after the biggest year-over-year increase in the index, Tiobe said.
Tiobe, a software quality services vendor that publishes the monthly index, named C# its language of the year for 2025 after the language rose 2.94 percentage points from a year earlier. C# also won the Tiobe honor for 2023, the company said.
In a bulletin accompanying the January 2026 index, Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen said C# has often been an early adopter of mainstream language design trends and noted what he described as two major shifts for the language, moving from Windows-only to cross-platform and from Microsoft-owned to open source.
Jansen said he had expected C# to prevail over Java in the business software market, but said the outcome is not yet settled. “It is an open question whether Java, with its verbose, boilerplate-heavy style and Oracle ownership, can continue to keep C# at bay,” Jansen said.
The Tiobe index measures language popularity using a formula that considers the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses and third-party vendors, and draws on data from major websites including Google, Amazon, Wikipedia and Bing, among others, the company said.
While Java’s position was steady, Tiobe’s January 2026 snapshot showed churn elsewhere in the top ranks. C and C++ swapped positions over the past year, Tiobe said. Jansen also pointed to a rebound for Perl, which rose from 32nd in January 2025 to 11th by the end of 2025, and to R’s return to the top 10, which he linked to data science and statistical computing. He said Go appears to have lost its place in the top 10 last year, and Ruby fell out of the top 20 and is unlikely to return soon.
Jansen also predicted that TypeScript, described in the bulletin as Microsoft’s JavaScript with type-safety, could break into Tiobe’s top 20. TypeScript ranked 32nd in the January 2026 Tiobe index, the company said.
A separate ranking cited in the announcement, the Pypl Popularity of Programming Language Index, also placed Java among its top languages. In Pypl’s top 10 for January 2026, Java ranked fourth at 10.45%, behind Python at 24.61%, a combined C and C++ category at 14.13%, and Objective-C at 13.35%, according to the announcement.
About the Author
John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He’s been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he’s written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].
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