The State of Web Vitals

LCP discovery

How the browser found the LCP resource: HTML, CSS, JS, preload, or an early-hints header.

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites Q1 2026 edition · Phone field outcomes
Metric LCP INP CLS
1

At a glance the headline numbers for LCP discovery

How the browser found the LCP resource: HTML, CSS, JS, preload, or an early-hints header.

6
Categories
90,431 sites
68.4%
Top share
html
100ms
Top INP
Median for html

The browser finds 68.4% of LCP images straight in the HTML. 0.8% hide behind JavaScript.

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · phone field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
2

LCP discovery who uses what, and how fast each group loads

Median INP
0
100ms
200ms
300ms
400ms
500ms
header81ms0% of sites
css96ms28% of sites
html100ms68% of sites
js103ms1% of sites
preload114ms2% of sites
103134ms0% of sites
VariantShare of sitesMedian
header 182 sites
0%
81ms
css 25,584 sites
28%
96ms
html 61,832 sites
68%
100ms
js 714 sites
1%
103ms
preload 2,106 sites
2%
114ms
103 13 sites
0%
134ms

Little daylight between the groups: every variant sits near 81ms median INP. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · phone field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
3

Passing INP per LCP discovery which group passes the INP most often

VariantSitesPassing INPINP
103 0% 13 100% 134ms
Css 28.3% 25,584 94% 96ms
Header 0.2% 182 94% 81ms
Html 68.4% 61,832 91% 100ms
Js 0.8% 714 91% 103ms
Preload 2.3% 2,106 90% 114ms
Good Needs Improvement Poor Sorted best-passing first · median colored by its own rating · pass = good INP (200ms at p75) · one value per site

No variant stands out: pass rates sit between 90% and 94%. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · phone field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
4

Why this matters for the Core Web Vitals, and where to start fixing it

The browser can only download what it has discovered, and the LCP's load delay is mostly discovery time. An image in the HTML markup is found by the preload scanner in the first bytes of the document. A CSS background image stays invisible until the stylesheet downloads and applies. An image injected by JavaScript stays invisible until that script downloads, parses and runs.

That order is the fix list. Get the LCP image into the markup, or preload it when it cannot be. Discovery through JavaScript is the slowest possible path for the most important pixels on the page.

How does this affect the Core Web Vitals?

LCP discovery correlates with the LCP. With HTML, 84% of sites pass the LCP. With JS, 69% do.

Go fix it LCP: resource load delay → Preload the LCP image → Background images are evil → How I lowered the LCP by 70 percent →
Related signals LCP image size → LCP element type → LCP origin → LCP image format → Chrome field data from 94,910 sites, representing millions of real page loads · How we measured