Embarcadero Technologies
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September 10, 2025
Austin, Texas - Embarcadero Technologies Announces Release of RAD Studio 13 Florence, including Delphi 13 and C++Builder 13.
Embarcadero Technologies is pleased to announce the General Availability of RAD Studio 13 Florence, including Delphi 13 Florence and C++Builder 13 Florence.
The release of RAD Studio 13 Florence brings important updates to both Delphi 13 and C++Builder 13, addressing multiple developer requests while introducing enhanced capabilities for modern application development.
Embarcadero Developer Advocate Ian Barker notes "the new RAD Studio Florence release is huge, with new features in almost every possible place plus a mountain of quality issues and fixes included. There's something for everyone whether you are using Delphi or C++."
Marco Cantu, Product Lead for IDE & Tooling, adds: "The new Florence release will have new Delphi language features and a new C++ compiler, VCL and FireMonkey extensions, new IDE productivity tools, and extensions and improved quality in each area, plus the most significant WebBroker extension in 20 years!"
What's New in RAD Studio 13 Florence
One much-anticipated feature is Delphi's new ternary operator, implemented using the "if" keyword, alongside other language extensions including NameOf intrinsic function, new compiler directives, and enhanced generic type constraints. C++Builder receives a substantial upgrade with Clang 20 support, introducing C++ 23 capabilities and improved Address Sanitizer runtime.
A complete 64-bit IDE for Windows development represents a major architectural advancement, offering full feature parity with enhanced debugging and code tooling capabilities. The SmartCore AI Component Pack enables developers to integrate AI functionality directly into applications, supporting multiple AI engines including OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and Ollama through a unified, driver-based architecture.
Additional enhancements include robust session management in WebBroker and WebStencils, GetIt package versioning, comprehensive IDE search features, and quality improvements across the VCL, FireMonkey, and FireDAC frameworks.
These updates strengthen RAD Studio's value for developers as a comprehensive solution for multi-platform native app development, delivering on customer demands while establishing a foundation for future AI-powered application development.
Here are the new features and quality improvements available in New Features in RAD Studio 13 Florence in more detail.
New Ternary Operator and Other Delphi Language Extensions
RAD Studio 13 offers a number of improvements to the Delphi language, starting with what has been the top requested language extension, a ternary operator. Implemented using the if keyword, the ternary operator added to Delphi resembles the same feature in many programming languages and offers a shorter way to express a condition directly in an expression.
This is not the only new language feature available for Delphi for all target platforms and compilers: RAD Studio 13 also introduces a new NameOf intrinsic function, new {$PUSHOPT} and {$POPOPT} compiler directives, implicit Self parameter declaration in record class operators Initialize and Finalize, new is not and not in language operators, a new noreturn directive for procedure declaration, and additional constraints for generic types. Available for Delphi-only.
C++ 23 Support Introduced in C++Builder Windows Modern Toolchain
The C++Builder Modern Win64 compiler has been updated to Clang 20. The new Clang 20 based compiler introduces C++ 23 support (and defaults to C++ 23). This is a significant further upgrade to the C++ Modern toolchain Embarcadero delivered in RAD Studio 12.x and a clear indication of Embarcadero's commitment to C++Builder.
Along with the update to LLVM and Clang 20, the new version offers an improved Address Sanitizer (ASAN) runtime, versioned shared libraries, and improved compatibility with legacy versions of the C++Builder compiler. Available for C++Builder-only.
64-bit IDE for the Windows 64 target platform
RAD Studio 13 includes our first full featured 64-bit IDE for the Windows 64 target platform. While it offers only Windows 64-bit as target, it is complete in the features for this platform. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
Compared to the 64-bit IDE "Initial Release" in 12.3, the 64-bit IDE in 13.0 offers Delphi and C++ support for building and debugging 64-bit Windows applications, now including: code tooling for C++ via Visual Assist; support for COM, ActiveX and Type libraries; Live Templates (Ctrl+J) and the Surround menu, and quality improvements.
The installation of this feature is now part of the core RAD Studio IDE installation and not a separate option, as it was for the "Initial Release".
SmartCore AI Component Pack - AI inside Your Apps
While Embarcadero has been shipping an AI integration for the RAD Studio IDE called Smart CodeInsight since 12.x, providing AI-powered coding assistance in the IDE, RAD Studio 13.0 introduces a new set of core AI components designed to help our customers add AI features to their apps or build brand new AI-focused apps with Delphi or C++Builder. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
This is a building block and a foundation for the future: It's a core architecture our customers and 3rd party vendors can build on and extend to integrate with additional AI engines and UI controls.
By downloading the SmartCore AI Component Pack from GetIt, customers will be able to use a new AI connection component (with a role similar to that of a database connection in FireDAC). This single AI-engine agnostic component will use specific drivers to communicate via REST with different AI engines (including OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and Ollama). The SmartCore AI engine offers the ability to add additional drivers for AI providers to expand the capabilities of your project as the market develops. The configuration is managed via an easy-to-use AI connection wizard.
Part of the component pack is a set of AI request components for different data types (like text, images, structure data) which can be associated with prompts and can be bound directly with UI controls to display the results. This component-based model makes it very simple to use the SmartCore AI Components in RAD Studio 13.0.
With the SmartCore AI Component Pack, developers can integrate AI into both existing and new applications, addressing many popular AI use cases, such as providing support for in-product content creation like generating images and other media, adding in-product localization support for on-the-fly translation, delivering in-app smart insights and personalized recommendations for data analysis, or building an in-app chatbot to add interactivity to an existing application.
Session Management and Other WebBroker and WebStencils Enhancements
WebStencils significantly extends the existing web technologies in RAD Studio (WebBroker, DataSnap, RAD Server) by providing server-side scripting and turning RAD Server from a Web Service engine into a Web Site and Web Service tool. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
Following the success of the WebStencils web template library introduced in RAD Studio 12, the new release offers a number of extensions to both WebStencils and the WebBroker foundation for RAD Studio web applications.
In RAD Studio 13, WebBroker adds sessions management, better Apache integration, Nginx web server support, and improved logging.
WebStencils brings support for session data, global variables, and a new switch statement. In addition, WebStencils integrates sessions authentication and a related authorization mechanism, offers direct access to dataset properties (along with new allow/disallow security lists to precisely control what the script can or cannot access).
Overall these additional features make building complex web sites with WebStencils significantly easier, providing a solid foundation for adding common features like sessions, user logins, and permissions management. Building powerful, fast and robust web servers powered by your business data is getting much faster with RAD Studio.
GetIt Packages Versioning
GetIt is RAD Studio's package manager, used to download and install additional libraries and features offered by Embarcadero, but also open source libraries and extensions provided by our developer community and vetted by Embarcadero. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
In this release, GetIt adds a long awaited feature, versioning support. This allows Embarcacero and our partners to publish and offer multiple versions of the same package and offers users the ability to pick a specific version their applications relies on rather than be forced to install the most recent version.
RAD Studio IDE Search Features
As Embarcadero continues to improve and modernize the RAD Studio IDE (in addition to the transition to 64-bit), this release adds extensive and configurable search features in many IDE panes, including the Project Manager, the Structure View, the Message pane and Events log. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
For the Message Log, RAD Studio 13 also adds additional highlighting options and introduces grouping for compiler hints and warnings in the same source code file.
RAD AI Companion Web Site
Along with the release of RAD Studio 13, Embarcadero is launching a RAD Studio tailored chat bot, offering the ability to query an AI specifically trained on our product and its libraries or to ask it to generate application source code. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
Among the many new features, Marco Cantu notes, "RAD Studio Florence notably fulfills some of the most popular and most voted customer demands: a ternary conditional operator for Delphi, a C++ compiler based on the current version of Clang, a MaskEdit control for FireMonkey, scrollable ActionMenus and TitleBar controls styling for VCL, and sessions management in WebBroker, just to name a few, delivering on customer requests!"
Quality Improvements: Improved Platforms Integration
RAD Studio includes compilers targeting Windows (with Delphi and C++), and Android, iOS, macOS and Linux platforms (with Delphi). Available for RAD Studio (both personalities for Windows, Delphi for other platforms).
The new release includes significant work in terms of Windows APIs cleanup, updated WinRT APIs, refreshed the WinAPI WinMD projection, and updated the WebView 2 control integrated in TEdgeBrowser. All of these updates provide an enhanced experience for Windows application developers.
Delphi also includes expanded iOS API headers, while for Android it offers several enhancements to the tools used for building and deploying apps on devices. In addition, RAD Studio 13 improves the Java2OP importer for Android.
Quality Improvements: VCL
In 13, Embarcadero is introducing new features and extensive quality improvements for the powerful integrated UI libraries. VCL includes, for the first time, an integration of the UIAutomation Microsoft interfaces, which can be used to support accessibility and to build automatic UI testing. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
In addition, VCL introduces TitleBar styling, improvements to ControlList, FormsTabsBar, TToggleSwitch components, and much more. Finally, this release offers ActionMainMenuBar scrolling, another feature requested by many customers over the years.
Quality Improvements: FireMonkey
FireMonkey in RAD Studio 13 integrates a new Display Link Service offering highly improved stability and smoothness of animations. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
The framework also offers increased performance when copying bitmaps, by leveraging the GPU, a brand new MaskEdit component, additional TPresentedScrollBox properties to control scroll animation, bounces, and touch interaction, a new IFMXSpellCheckerServiceEx interface, updated TAlignLayout to include new alignment options for centering controls, and a new ApplicationEvents component.
In this release, Embarcadero improved the FMXLinux integration, making it easier to use this Linux UI model which is available for Enterprise customers as a GetIt package. Skia4Delphi support was also updated to the most recent version of the library.
Quality Improvements: FireDAC and Database
Database access is a foundation of RAD Studio. With this release, Embarcadero is providing additional updates to its high quality FireDAC solution, which encompasses a large number of database servers. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
From the expanded support for Unsigned Big Integer database fields to more flexible options when dragging a field from the fields editor to a visual form, there are a large number of improvements in this area. Most notable are the new features associated with OAuth authentication for Oracle, parallel backup operations for FireBird, and improved support for PostgreSQL array types.
While RAD Studio ships with the InterBase 2020 Developer edition, it already includes a license for the upcoming InterBase 15 Developer edition.
Quality Improvements: RAD Server Enhancements
RAD Studio 13 makes the use of the Swagger-based API Documentation more flexible, as schema and reference parameters are now optional, adds to the RAD Server Multi-tenancy support an option to integrate tenant-specific configuration, and introduces a simple and direct way to implement API Versioning (that is having a server offering multiple versions of the same REST APIs for older and newer client applications). Available for RAD Studio (both personalities, Enterprise+ only).
Quality Improvements: Delphi and C++ Code Tooling
RAD Studio includes powerful tools for Delphi and C++ developers to make it easier to write their application code. In response to specific Delphi customer requests, the old "Classic" Delphi CodeInsight engine for code completion is available again. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
It will be offered as an alternative to the DelphiLSP powered version in the IDE, providing access for anyone who wants to use it. In parallel, we are continuing the work to improve the DelphiLSP architecture.
In addition, we are providing a Delphi Upgrade Advisor wizard, which allows developers to identify meaningful changes to project configuration and code that can significantly improve the compilation time and code tooling experience.
On the C++ side, we have reworked the Visual Assist integration to enable it in the 64-bit IDE, while providing improved stability also in the 32-bit IDE.
Quality Improvements: IDE and Debugger Quality
This release includes a large number of improvements to the IDE, in addition to the features mentioned earlier. For the debugger, we have moved our LLDB-based debuggers to version 20 of LLDB, matching the update of the C++ compiler to Clang 20. Available for RAD Studio (both personalities).
The quality of the debugger is also improved, focusing primarily on the 64-bit IDE debug experience. Furthermore, the Attach to Process dialog box has been redesigned to include additional columns that display information about processes, as well as various UI controls.
For the IDE in general, we have made several improvements to Smart CodeInsight (our AI for developers) with a new Test Connection feature in the configuration dialog, improvements to the prompts and the response processing. In the IDE, you can now use the editor background color for editor tabs, activate the IDE theme for Structural Highlight colors, and copy error messages from the structure pane.
RAD Studio 13 also expands on the extensive ToolsAPI the IDE offers to allow customers (and third party vendors) to expand and customize the IDE in almost unlimited ways using an official set of interfaces.
How to Find Out More
For more information contact Embarcadero through This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. More information is also available on the What's New in RAD Studio 13 Florence page on the Embarcadero website.
About Embarcadero Technologies
Embarcadero builds tools that solve productivity problems for application developers. The company's products allow users to design, build, and run applications from a single code base across all platforms. Ninety of the Fortune 100 companies and a community of more than three million C++ and Delphi users worldwide rely on Embarcadero's award-winning products to deliver critical enterprise applications. Embarcadero is a division of Idera, Inc.
To learn more, visit https://www.embarcadero.com.