diff --git a/news/changelog-1.8.md b/news/changelog-1.8.md
index 0a81500ecab..5b3660a9828 100644
--- a/news/changelog-1.8.md
+++ b/news/changelog-1.8.md
@@ -73,6 +73,7 @@ All changes included in 1.8:
 - ([#12727](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/12727)): Do not crash in the presence of malformed tabset contents.
 - ([#12806](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/12806)): Use pandoc APIs to handle codepage conversion on Windows.
 - ([#12811](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/12811)): Add support for YouTube Shorts in `video` shortcode.
+- ([#13112](https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/pull/13112)): Add `quarto.format.format_identifier()` API entry.
 
 ## Commands
 
diff --git a/src/resources/lua-types/quarto/format.lua b/src/resources/lua-types/quarto/format.lua
index 285ad070a84..70bd60ab225 100644
--- a/src/resources/lua-types/quarto/format.lua
+++ b/src/resources/lua-types/quarto/format.lua
@@ -239,4 +239,13 @@ Returns an object with the format name and variants as would be interpreted by P
 ]]
 ---@param raw_format string The format's string
 ---@return quarto.format.ParseFormatResult
-function quarto.format.parse_format(raw_format) end
\ No newline at end of file
+function quarto.format.parse_format(raw_format) end
+
+--[[
+Returns a table with the format identifier information, including:
+- `target-format`: The full target format name, e.g. `html+variant`
+- `base-format`: The base format name, e.g. `html`
+- `display-name`: A human-readable display name for the format, e.g. `HTML`
+- `extension`: The name of the extension that exposes the format, if present
+]]
+function quarto.format.format_identifier() end
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/src/resources/pandoc/datadir/_format.lua b/src/resources/pandoc/datadir/_format.lua
index 4dbf44ecff8..64fe30c5875 100644
--- a/src/resources/pandoc/datadir/_format.lua
+++ b/src/resources/pandoc/datadir/_format.lua
@@ -288,6 +288,9 @@ local function _main()
   end
 
   return {
+    format_identifier = function()
+      return param("format-identifier", {})
+    end,
     isAsciiDocOutput = isAsciiDocOutput,
     is_asciidoc_output = isAsciiDocOutput,
     isRawHtml = isRawHtml,
diff --git a/tests/docs/smoke-all/lua/format/format-identifier.lua b/tests/docs/smoke-all/lua/format/format-identifier.lua
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..540769cd98f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/docs/smoke-all/lua/format/format-identifier.lua
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+function Pandoc(doc)
+  local identifier = quarto.format.format_identifier()
+  assert(identifier["target-format"] == "html+test")
+  assert(identifier["base-format"] == "html")
+  assert(identifier["display-name"] == "HTML")
+  return doc
+end
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tests/docs/smoke-all/lua/format/format-identifier.qmd b/tests/docs/smoke-all/lua/format/format-identifier.qmd
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..45616c60a19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/docs/smoke-all/lua/format/format-identifier.qmd
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+---
+format: html+test
+filters:
+  - format-identifier.lua
+---
+