JDK 26 is downloadable from Oracle.com. A short-term release of Java backed by six months of Premier-level support, JDK 26 follows the September 16 release of JDK 25, which is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release backed by several years of Premier-level support. General availability of JDK 26 follows two rampdown releases and two release candidates.
The latest JEP feature to be added, primitive types in patterns, instanceof, and switch, is intended to enhance pattern matching by allowing primitive types in all pattern contexts, and to extend instanceof and switch to work with all primitive types. Now in its fourth preview, this feature was previously previewed in JDK 23, JDK 24, and JDK 25. Goals for this feature include enabling uniform data exploration by allowing type patterns for all types, aligning type patterns with instanceof and aligning instanceof with safe casting, and allowing pattern matching to use primitive types in both nested and top-level pattern contexts. Other goals include providing easy-to-use constructs that eliminate the risk of losing information due to unsafe casts, and—following the enhancements to switch in Java 5 (enum switch) and Java 7 (string switch)—allowing switch to process values of any primitive type. Changes in this fourth preview include enhancing the definition of unconditional exactness and applying tighter dominance checks in switch constructs. The changes enable the compiler to identify a wider range of coding errors. For AI, this feature simplifies integration of AI with business logic.
With ahead-of-time object caching, the HotSpot JVM would gain improved startup and warmup times, so it can be used with any garbage collector including the low-latency Z Garbage Collector (ZGC). This would be done by making it possible to load cached Java objects sequentially into memory from a neutral, GC-agnostic format, rather than mapping them directly into memory in a GC-specific format. Goals of this feature include allowing all garbage collectors to work smoothly with the AOT (ahead of time) cache introduced by Project Leyden, separating AOT cache from GC implementation details, and ensuring that use of the AOT cache does not materially impact startup time, relative to previous releases. AI applications also get improved startup via AOT caching with any GC.