Which RFC standardized HTTP/2 in 2015?

RFC 7540 standardized HTTP/2 in 2015.

Published by the Internet Engineering Task Force in May 2015, RFC 7540 is titled “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Version 2 (HTTP/2).” It defined a more efficient way to carry familiar HTTP semantics over a connection, addressing performance limits associated with HTTP/1.1.

HTTP/2 introduced binary framing, multiplexed streams, header-field compression through HPACK, request prioritization, and server push. Multiplexing lets multiple request-and-response exchanges share one connection instead of waiting in separate connection queues, reducing overhead and improving responsiveness, especially on pages that load many resources.

The RFC did not replace HTTP’s basic meaning or URL schemes: HTTP/2 still uses familiar methods, status codes, and ports 80 and 443. A common mix-up is RFC 2616, which specified HTTP/1.1, while RFC 6455 specifies WebSocket and RFC 791 specifies IPv4. Another nuance is that RFC 7540 has since been obsoleted by RFC 9113, but 7540 remains the correct answer to a question specifically asking which RFC standardized HTTP/2 in 2015.