NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization

Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization is a program and competition by NIST to update their standards to include post-quantum cryptography. It was announced at PQCrypto 2016. Twenty-three signature schemes and fifty-nine encryption/KEM schemes were submitted by the initial submission deadline at the end of 2017 of which sixty-nine total were deemed complete and proper and participated in the first round. Seven of these, of which three are signature schemes, advanced to the third round, which was announced in July 2020. On August 13, 2024, NIST released final versions of the first three Post Quantum Crypto Standards: FIPS 203, FIPS 204, and FIPS 205. On March 11, 2025 NIST released Hamming Quasi-Cyclic (HQC) as the fifth algorithm for post-quantum asymmetric encryption as used for key encapsulation / exchange.