Highlights of this release include:

• Figure and Axes creation / management
  • subplot_mosaic supports simple Axes sharing
  • Figure now has draw_without_rendering method
  • Figure __init__ passes keyword arguments through to set
• Plotting methods
  • Add Annulus patch
  • set_data method for FancyArrow patch
  • New arrow styles in ArrowStyle and ConnectionPatch
  • Setting collection offset transform after initialization
• Colors and colormaps
  • Colormap registry (experimental)
  • Image interpolation now possible at RGBA stage
  • imshow supports half-float arrays
  • A callback registry has been added to Normalize objects
• Titles, ticks, and labels
  • Settings tick positions and labels simultaneously in set_ticks
• Fonts and Text
  • Triple and quadruple dot mathtext accents
  • Font properties of legend title are configurable
  • Text and TextBox parse_math option
  • Text can be positioned inside TextBox widget
  • Simplified font setting for usetex mode
  • Type 42 subsetting is now enabled for PDF/PS backends
• rcParams improvements
  • Allow setting default legend labelcolor globally
• 3D Axes improvements
  • Axes3D now allows manual control of draw order
  • Allow changing the vertical axis in 3D plots
  • plot_surface supports masked arrays and NaNs
  • 3D plotting methods support data keyword argument
• Interactive tool improvements
  • Colorbars now have pan and zoom functionality
  • Updated appearance of Slider widgets
  • Selector additions of clearing, dragging, and removal
  • CallbackRegistry objects gain a method to temporarily block signals
  • Directional sizing cursors
• Sphinx extensions
  • More configuration of mathmpl sphinx extension
• Backend-specific improvements
  • New GTK4 backend
  • New Qt6 backend
  • HiDPI support in Cairo-based, GTK, and Tk backends
  • Qt figure options editor improvements
  • WX backends support mouse navigation buttons
  • WebAgg uses asyncio instead of Tornado