Clojure 1.13.0-alpha1 adds checked map destructuring

Category: Languages
Status: developing
Sources: Clojure news, HN discussion
Summary: Clojure 1.13.0-alpha1, published 2026-07-02, adds checked variants of the map-destructuring directives (:keys!, :syms!, :strs!) that throw when a required key is absent instead of binding nil, plus a change letting a PersistentArrayMap grow to size 64 before converting to a PersistentHashMap, Java bytecode verification updates, and dependency upgrades. It is an alpha available on Maven Central, not a stable release.
Why it matters: Checked destructuring turns a class of silent nil-binding bugs into an explicit error at bind time for Clojure codebases that adopt it.