We are happy to announce the general availability of Liberica JDK 26 builds! The new version contains:
- 2,825 fixes overall — 2,665 in JDK and 160 in FX. BellSoft contributed 9 fixes to this release.
- 10 JEPs with new, improved, or removed features.
Summary of JEPs in JDK 26
New Features
- JEP 500: Prepare to Make Final Mean Final makes the JVM issue warnings about uses of deep reflection to mutate final fields.
- JEP 517: HTTP/3 for the HTTP Client API updates the Java’s HTTP Client API to support the HTTP/3 protocol.
- JEP 522: G1 GC: Improve Throughput by Reducing Synchronization reduces the amount of synchronization required between application threads and G1 GC threads.
Enhanced Features
- JEP 516: Ahead-of-Time Object Caching with Any GC allows all garbage collectors, including Z GC, to work smoothly with the AOT cache introduced by Project Leyden.
- JEP 524: PEM Encodings of Cryptographic Objects (Second Preview) re-previews the API for encoding/decoding cryptography-related objects with several changes, including new methods and better alignment of exceptions.
- JEP 525: Structured Concurrency (Sixth Preview) re-preview the feature with minor changes only to get additional feedback.
- JEP 526: Lazy Constants (Second Preview) revises the feature and introduces a second preview with several important changes, including the new name and the re-orientation of the feature to higher-level use cases.
- JEP 529: Vector API (Eleventh Incubator) re-incubates the Vector API without significant changes.
- JEP 530: Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Fourth Preview) re-previews the feature with improved definition of unconditional exactness and tighter dominance checks in switch constructs.
Removed Features
- JEP 504: Remove the Applet API removes the entire java.applet package and related classes.
You can read more about each JEP in our Overview of JDK 26 Features or watch a dedicated video overview.
Download Liberica JDK 26 builds now!
Regardless of whether you are planning to migrate to the next LTS release or just want to play around with new Java features, you can download and use Liberica JDK for free. Head over to the Liberica JDK Download Center to get the fresh JDK builds for your platform.
