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2d ago

Oracle Releases Java 26 With HTTP/3, Faster G1 GC, and Tighter Reflection Rules

Short support through September 2026 makes it a candidate for CI testing rather than immediate production use.

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Overview

  • JDK 26 ships as a non‑LTS feature release with 10 JEPs spanning networking, performance, language previews, and security.
  • JEP 522 redesigns G1’s write barriers to reduce synchronization, with external testing reporting roughly 5–15% higher throughput on reference‑heavy workloads.
  • JEP 517 adds HTTP/3 to the built‑in HttpClient so applications can opt in with a version setting and automatically fall back to HTTP/2 when needed.
  • JEP 500 now warns when libraries mutate final fields via reflection, with teams able to enforce failures in CI using --illegal-final-field-mutation=deny or temporarily allow them with --enable-final-field-mutation=ALL-UNNAMED.
  • Security and library changes include a second‑preview PEM API for keys and certificates (JEP 524) and the removal of the long‑deprecated Applet API (JEP 504).