#21768·mypy

Overload resolution collapses to Any when Any is nested inside a generic argument, not just top-level

Author: dpinolCreated Jul 23, 2026Updated Sep 14, 2026
Labelsbug

Bug Report

The docs state the return type becomes Any only when "an argument [is] of type Any". But when the Any is nested inside a generic type argument (Sequence[Any] vs Sequence[int]), mypy also collapses the result to Any, even though the first overload matches unambiguously. Is this intended? If so, the "Type checking calls to overloads" section should probably document the nested case.

To Reproduce

from collections.abc import Sequence
from typing import Any, overload, reveal_type


@overload
def f(s: Sequence[int]) -> str: ...
@overload
def f(s: object) -> int: ...
def f(s: object) -> int | str:
    return "2"


concrete: Sequence[int] = [1]
nested_any: Sequence[Any] = [1]

reveal_type(f(concrete))  # Revealed type is "str"    (expected)
reveal_type(f(nested_any))  # Revealed type is "Any"    (surprising)

Expected Behavior

reveal_type on Sequence[Any] should show "str"

Actual Behavior

reveal_type on Sequence[Any] shows "Any"

Your Environment

  • Mypy version used: mypy 2.3.0
  • Mypy command-line flags: none
  • Mypy configuration options from mypy.ini (and other config files): none
  • Python version used: Python 3.14.6