We study the mixing time of Glauber dynamics for sampling uniformly from the proper $q$-colorings of sparse Erdős-Rényi random graphs $G(n,d/n)$. Our main result establishes that with probability $1-o(1)$ over the draw of $G$, Glauber dynamics is rapidly mixing for every $q\geq d+d^{1/2+\varepsilon}$, given any fixed $0<\varepsilon\leq1/2$ and any sufficiently large fixed $d$. In particular, the surplus of colors above $d$ is sublinear and close to $\sqrt{d}$. The achieved color range therefore approaches the tree uniqueness threshold and improves over the previously best achievable number of colors $q > 1.763 d$ due to Efthymiou, Hayes, Stefankovic, and Vigoda [SODA 2018]. Moreover, our mixing-time bound is $O(n^{2+o_d(1)})$, and hence almost quadratic as $d\rightarrow\infty$. Our proof is based on establishing a spectral gap for block dynamics resulting from a suitable decomposition of $G(n,d/n)$ into blocks and singleton vertices, ensuring that every high-degree vertex is encapsulated within a block. Our main technical contribution is a novel way of establishing rapid mixing of block dynamics via an integrated Bochner-Bakry-Émery approach, which we expect to have applications beyond sampling colorings. We further devise a new block decomposition of $G(n,d/n)$ that strengthens and simplifies similar constructions used in previous work. Finally, to compare block and Glauber dynamics, we establish a novel recursive separator decomposition of tree-like blocks, together with a coupling argument that avoids the need for nearly uniform color marginals at vertices adjacent to hubs. This comparison argument might be of independent interest.

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