Adjacent sibling selectors

The + combinator separates two selectors and matches the second element only if it immediately follows the first element.

Syntax

former_element + target_element { style properties }

Example

li:first-of-type + li {
  color: red;
}
<ul>
  <li>One</li>
  <li>Two</li>
  <li>Three</li>
</ul>

Another use case might be styling of "caption span"s of the following <img> elements:

img + span.caption {
  font-style: italic;
}

will match the following <span> elements:

<img src="photo1.jpg"><span class="caption">The first photo</span>
<img src="photo2.jpg"><span class="caption">The second photo</span>

Specifications

Specification Status Comment
Selectors Level 4
The definition of 'next-sibling combinator' in that specification.
Working Draft  
Selectors Level 3
The definition of 'Adjacent sibling combinator' in that specification.
Recommendation  
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1)
The definition of 'Adjacent sibling selectors' in that specification.
Recommendation Initial definition.

Browser compatibility

Feature Chrome Edge Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) 7.0[1] (Yes) (Yes)
Feature Android Edge Firefox Mobile (Gecko) IE Mobile Opera Mobile Safari Mobile
Basic support 2.1 (Yes) (Yes) ? (Yes) (Yes)

[1] Internet Explorer 7 doesn't update the style correctly when an element is dynamically placed before an element that matched the selector. In Internet Explorer 8, if an element is inserted dynamically by clicking on a link the first-child style isn't applied until the link loses focus.

See also

Document Tags and Contributors

 Last updated by: mfluehr,