JDK 28 Nears Rampdown Phase One with Most JEPs Integrated
The JDK 28 project page (last updated November 2) confirms the release schedule: Rampdown Phase One on December 3, 2026, when the feature set is frozen and the stabilization branch is cut. Rampdown Phase Two follows on January 14, 2027, the Release Candidate phase starts February 4, and General Availability is set for March 9, 2027.
With less than four weeks until the freeze, almost all of the ten targeted JEPs have moved past Targeted. The OpenJDK JEP index now lists these as Integrated in the mainline: JEP 401 (Value Objects, Preview), JEP 539 (Strict Field Initialization in the JVM, Preview), JEP 540 (Simple JSON API, Incubator), JEP 543 (Structured Concurrency, final), JEP 544 (Ahead-of-Time Code Compilation), JEP 545 (Faster Startup and Warmup with ZGC), and JEP 546 (Adaptive Heap Sizing for ZGC). JEP 542 (PEM Encodings of Cryptographic Objects) is Completed and JEP 541 (Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal) is delivered. JEP 535 (Shenandoah GC generational mode by default) is the only one still at Targeted.
Two Candidates have JDK 28 in view but are not yet targeted: JEP 528 (Post-Mortem Crash Analysis with jcmd) and JEP 547 (Lazy Constants, Fourth Preview). Anything not proposed and targeted in the next few weeks will slip to JDK 29. Value classes and AOT code compilation are already in the early-access builds at jdk.java.net/28, so now is a good time to run test suites against them. Value classes in particular change identity semantics for migrated JDK types.
Read more — OpenJDK
Java News Roundup: TornadoVM 8.0 Ships Its Own Compiler, LangChain4j 1.23, Hibernate ORM 8.0 Beta4
InfoQ's roundup for the week of October 26 covers JDK 28 early-access Build 22 and the GA release of TornadoVM 8.0.0. The headline change in TornadoVM 8 is a pure-Java compiler, the TornadoVM Compiler (TC), which replaces its previous dependency on the Graal/JVMCI path for generating GPU and accelerator code. That makes TornadoVM much easier to run on stock JDK distributions. The release also uses JEP 516 (Ahead-of-Time Object Caching with Any GC) to cut startup overhead.
On the framework side, LangChain4j 1.23.0 shipped as a formal release alongside its thirty-third beta. Hibernate ORM reached 8.0.0.Beta4, Hibernate Reactive shipped 5.1.0.Beta1 and 5.0.0, and JobRunr got a 9.0.3 point release. Tooling updates include Eclipse JNoSQL 1.2.0, Endive 1.2.0, JBang 0.143.0, JReleaser 1.27.0 and the first release candidate of Gradle 9.9.0.
The roundup also introduces the Quarkus Almanac, a new reference resource from the Quarkus team. Anyone tracking the Hibernate 8 migration should read the Beta4 notes now, because the ORM 8.0 line is approaching feature-complete.
Read more — InfoQ
Project Detroit: Embedding V8 and CPython in Java via the FFM API
In a Devoxx Belgium 2026 session published on Inside Java, Maurizio Cimadamore presented Project Detroit, which takes a different approach to running other languages on the JVM. Rather than reimplementing a language runtime in Java, as Nashorn did for JavaScript, Detroit uses the Foreign Function & Memory (FFM) API to embed existing native runtimes such as V8 and CPython directly in a Java application.
The talk contrasts this with Nashorn's history: shipped in JDK 8, deprecated in Java 11 and removed in Java 15, largely because tracking the evolving ECMAScript spec in a separate Java implementation was too costly. Embedding the reference runtimes gives full language compatibility from day one. The hard engineering problems move elsewhere: two garbage collectors have to cooperate when objects cross the boundary, and calls into native code must not pin virtual threads.
This matters for teams that today shell out to Node or Python processes for scripting, data science libraries or server-side rendering. An FFM-based embedding could make those in-process calls with JVM-managed lifecycles. Detroit is still an OpenJDK project rather than a JEP, so there is no release target yet.
Read more — Inside Java
Inside Java Podcast: "Ask the Architects" at Devoxx Belgium
Episode 74 of the Inside Java Podcast is a recording of the "Ask the Architects" session at Devoxx Belgium 2026. The panel included Georges Saab, Alan Bateman, Ron Pressler, Gavin Bierman, Maurizio Cimadamore, Viktor Klang, David Simms, Per-Åke Minborg and host Nicolai Parlog, and it answered audience questions.
Topics covered a custom virtual thread scheduler, the OpenJDK approach to deprecations and removals, Javadoc and AI, how OpenJDK sets priorities in the age of AI, primitive specialization for generics after value classes, better modules, memory layout introspection, the future of string templates, easier object construction, and automatic heap sizing. The show notes link Ron Pressler's Devoxx keynote, "Java - The Year of the Runtime!".
No new JEPs were announced, but the session is a useful signal of where the architects are heading after Valhalla's first preview. Primitive specialization and construction ergonomics both came up as next steps.
Read more — Inside Java
Links & Sources
You May Also Enjoy
