In December 2016, NIST began a program to select the best PQC algorithms in the area of public key cryptography. In July 2022, after several rounds of the competition, NIST announced the first set of algorithms to be standardized for digital signature and key establishment methods. The resulting standardization process is expected to take approximately 2 years.

On July 5, 2022, NIST selected four PQC algorithms from round 3 of its competition for standardization. For key establishment method, the algorithm that NIST selected is CRYSTALS-KYBER. For digital signatures, NIST selected three algorithms: CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM, FALCON, and SPHINCS+.

CRYSTALS-KYBER was renamed to ML-KEM and published in FIPS 203.
CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM was renamed to ML-DSA and published in FIPS 204.
SPHINCS+ was renamed to SLH-DSA and published in FIPS 205.
FALCON was renamed to FN-DSA and will be published in FIPS 206 (not available yet).

On March 11, 2025, in a fourth round, NIST selected HQC as a KEM for standardization.

See https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography/Workshops-and-Timeline for more details on the timeline.