Open LLMs shift from full to hybrid attention in 2026

The author analyzes trends in open language model architectures through 2026, highlighting a continued transition away from full attention toward hybrid models. By the second half of 2026, models exhibit an even split between partial full-attention hybrids and zero-full-attention architectures. This shift aims to reduce attention computation and memory usage, making long contexts, large code bases, and agent use cases more efficient. Open article →