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 · Desktop 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
49ms
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 · desktop 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
css48ms28% of sites
html49ms68% of sites
js53ms1% of sites
preload58ms2% of sites
header63ms0% of sites
VariantShare of sitesMedian
css 25,584 sites
28%
48ms
html 61,832 sites
68%
49ms
js 714 sites
1%
53ms
preload 2,106 sites
2%
58ms
header 182 sites
0%
63ms

Little daylight between the groups: every variant sits near 48ms median INP. computed

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

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

VariantSitesPassing INPINP
Header 0.2% 182 100% 63ms
Js 0.8% 714 100% 53ms
Css 28.3% 25,584 99% 48ms
Html 68.4% 61,832 99% 49ms
Preload 2.3% 2,106 99% 58ms
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 99% and 100%. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · desktop 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, 87% of sites pass the LCP. With JS, 75% 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