JDK 27 Enters Rampdown With G1 as Default and Post-Quantum TLS
JDK 27's first release candidate became available on August 20, 2026, slightly later than originally planned, and the release is on track for general availability on September 15, 2026. The feature set is now frozen at nine JEPs, and no further JEPs will be targeted to this release.
The headline platform change is that G1 becomes the default garbage collector across all environments, replacing the prior default selection logic that varied by heap size and available processors. JDK 27 also adds post-quantum hybrid key exchange support for TLS 1.3, letting applications negotiate quantum-resistant key exchange algorithms alongside classical ones during the transition period recommended by NIST guidance. Other changes landing in this release include compact object headers enabled by default (reducing per-object memory overhead across the JVM), JFR data redaction for sensitive fields captured in flight recordings, a further preview round of structured concurrency, and continued incubation of the Vector API.
Separately, JEP 532 (Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch) was elevated to Proposed to Target for JDK 27, marking a fifth preview round after four consecutive rounds spanning JDK 23 through JDK 26 — an unusually long preview cycle that reflects ongoing refinement of how primitive types interact with pattern matching syntax.
Looking ahead, OpenJDK has already targeted several JEPs for JDK 28: JEP 539 (Strict Field Initialization in the JVM, Preview), JEP 401 (Value Objects, Preview), JEP 535 (Shenandoah GC: Generational Mode by Default), and JEP 541 (Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal). The Value Objects preview in particular continues Project Valhalla's long-running effort to bring flattened, identity-free value types to the JVM, while the Shenandoah change would make generational collection the default mode for that collector, mirroring the maturation path G1's generational mode took in earlier releases.
Read more — InfoQ
Jakarta EE 12 Core Profile Nears Release, BellSoft Ships Liberica JDK Security Patches
The Jakarta EE Working Group remains on track to ship the Jakarta EE 12 Core Profile in time for JakartaOne Livestream 2026, according to the project's latest community update. The Core Profile bundles a lightweight subset of Jakarta EE specifications — including Jakarta Contexts and Dependency Injection 5.0, Jakarta RESTful Web Services 5.0, and Jakarta JSON Processing — targeted at microservice and constrained-runtime deployments rather than full application servers. The broader Jakarta EE 12 Platform and Web Profile releases are being tracked separately, with the Jakarta EE Platform project now turning more attention to platform- and web-profile-level specification work for a target in the first half of next year.
Alongside the specification progress, BellSoft released a Critical Patch Update for its Liberica JDK distribution covering multiple LTS lines. The update bundles dozens of fixes and backports across the supported Liberica JDK versions, continuing BellSoft's practice of shipping security-only builds in step with Oracle's quarterly Critical Patch Update cadence while contributing a portion of the fixes upstream. For teams running Liberica as an OpenJDK alternative in production, the update is a drop-in replacement requiring no application changes — only a runtime version bump.
Read more — InfoQ
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