Cloudflare becomes a certificate authority and lines up post-quantum certificates for 2027

On 29 September 2026, Cloudflare announced its intent to become a public certificate authority, twelve years after launching Universal SSL, with a root acquired from GlobalSign and applications to the Chrome, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla root programs. It is targeting post-quantum certificates and Merkle Tree Certificates as early as Q1 2027: a second mass-scale free provider is taking shape, and your ACME deployment chain must be able to switch.