OIDF · Approved Final 6 May 2026
OpenID Federation 1.1
openid-federation-1_1-final
If your agents must be accepted as clients across a national or campus federation without per-AS portals, this is the OIDC way. Cross-org agent identity more often uses WIMSE, SPIFFE federation, or DID/VC work instead.
At a glance
- Problem
- Large numbers of OPs and RPs cannot pairwise-register. Federation lets them discover and trust each other through a chain of signed entity statements from trust anchors.
- Identity / authn / authz
- Trust establishment for identity providers and relying parties. Not the user-authentication protocol itself.
Actors
- Trust anchors
- Intermediate entities
- OPs
- RPs
When this matters for agents
When this matters for agents: if your agents must be accepted as OIDC clients across a national or campus federation without per-AS portals. Cross-org agent identity more often uses WIMSE, SPIFFE federation, or DID/VC. AAuth four-party mode is a different federation (PS to resource AS) — do not conflate them.
Flow in plain language
Each entity publishes a well-known entity statement. Relying parties walk the chain to a trust anchor, verifying signatures and metadata policies, then proceed with OIDC/OAuth.
Key tokens and claims
- entity statement JWT
- Signed metadata about an entity, including authority hints.
Implementer notes
OpenID Federation for OpenID Connect 1.1 was approved Final in the same vote. AAuth's four-party mode is a different federation (PS to resource AS), not OpenID Federation — do not conflate them.
Relationship to others
Primary sources
- OpenID Federation 1.1https://openid.net/specs/openid-federation-1_1-final.html
- Approval announcementhttps://openid.net/openid-federation-1-1-final-specifications-approved/