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Java 26 Arrives With AI Integration and a New Ecosystem Portfolio — What It Means for DevOps Teams

Oracle released Java 26 on March 17, 2026, and while every six-month release comes with its own set of improvements, this one carries a broader message: Java isn’t just keeping pace with the AI era — it’s actively positioning itself as the infrastructure layer where AI workloads will run.

For DevOps teams managing large Java estates, that’s worth paying attention to.

The Scale of What You’re Already Running

Before getting into what’s new, it helps to remember what’s already in place. According to a 2025 VDC study, Java is the number one language for overall enterprise use and for cloud-native deployments. There are 73 billion active JVMs running today, with 51 billion of those in the cloud.

That scale matters when you’re thinking about where AI fits in. Most of the systems where agentic AI will eventually operate — transactional platforms, backend services, data pipelines — are already running on Java. The question for DevOps teams isn’t whether to adopt Java for AI. It’s how to evolve the Java estates you’re already responsible for.

Java 26 gives you concrete tools to do that.

What’s in the Release

Java 26 delivers 10 JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs) focused on performance, AI readiness, security, and language modernization, plus thousands of additional stability and reliability improvements.

From a DevOps perspective, a few stand out.

Startup and throughput. JEP 516 (Ahead-of-Time Object Caching) reduces application startup time and improves warm-up performance across any garbage collector, including the low-latency ZGC. JEP 522 increases throughput with the G1 garbage collector by reducing synchronization between application and GC threads. Both of these matter at scale — faster startup means faster scaling, and better throughput means doing more with the hardware you already have.

Concurrency for AI workloads. JEP 525 (Structured Concurrency) simplifies how teams build and manage multithreaded code. This is particularly relevant for agentic AI workloads, where coordinating multiple tasks across threads — and handling failures gracefully — is central to ensuring the reliability of those systems.

Security posture. JEP 500 enforces Java’s “integrity by default” principle, preventing unintended modifications to final fields. JEP 524 adds standardized PEM encoding for cryptographic objects, simplifying compliance workflows. Java 26 also introduces Hybrid Public Key Encryption (HPKE) out of the box and post-quantum ready JAR signing, which matters for teams starting to think about long-term supply chain security.

HTTP/3 support. JEP 517 adds HTTP/3 to the HTTP Client API, enabling Java microservices and APIs to benefit from reduced latency and more reliable connections with minimal code changes.

The Java Verified Portfolio Changes the Support Equation

The bigger operational story in this release may be the introduction of the Oracle Java Verified Portfolio (JVP). This is a new, curated set of Oracle-supported tools, frameworks, and libraries designed to extend enterprise support beyond the JDK itself.

At launch, JVP includes commercial support for three components:

Helidon is Oracle’s open-source, cloud-native microservices framework. It’s built on Java Virtual Threads, integrates with LangChain4j, and supports MCP-based AI agent development. Previously, commercial support for Helidon was only available to Oracle WebLogic and Coherence customers. JVP opens that up to all Java SE subscribers and OCI customers at no additional cost.

JavaFX is back under commercial support after a multi-year gap. Oracle is reintroducing it to meet demand for rich, interactive UIs — particularly in AI-driven analytics and data visualization. Support now covers all LTS versions during their five-year Premier Support window.

The Java Platform Extension for VS Code rounds out the portfolio. With over 5.1 million downloads and a perfect 5.0 rating, this extension now has enterprise-backed support, including compatibility with new JDK features as soon as they’re introduced.

For DevOps teams, JVP changes the conversation about supply chain risk. Instead of tracking multiple upstream sources with varying support timelines, you get a single, Oracle-governed source of truth for these components — with clear roadmap alignment to JDK releases.

The AI Strategy is Three-Pronged

Oracle’s approach to Java and AI isn’t limited to runtime improvements. The briefing team outlined a three-part strategy: agentic development (using tools like Embabel, Spring AI, and Oracle Code Assist to build AI-assisted development workflows), model integration from existing Java business applications (via Helidon MCP, LangChain4j, and the OCI SDK for Java), and model training and deployment (coming through future work in Projects Panama, Valhalla, and Babylon).

Georges Saab, senior vice president of the Oracle Java Platform, put it plainly during a pre-release briefing: “We think very carefully about what we put into Java. We try to balance a story of long-term stability for your workloads that need that, but also aggressively pushing with innovation on the things that need that.”

The near-term story for most enterprise teams is the middle layer: integrating AI capabilities into existing systems. Java 26 and the JVP make that easier without requiring a platform migration.

Donald Smith, VP of Java Product Management, pointed to rising demand as the driver behind some of the commercial support decisions in this release: “We’re seeing an increased interest in building analytics-type applications in Java, thanks to AI. That’s one of the reasons we’re bringing JavaFX back. And on top of that, we’re formalizing support for tools that customers have already been relying on — making it explicit that they can engage us directly.”

“Java 26 signals a deliberate move by Oracle to position the JVM as the control plane for enterprise AI workloads, not just a runtime for existing applications. The Java Verified Portfolio extends that claim into the tooling layer, giving DevOps teams a governed supply chain for frameworks and libraries that were previously managed through fragmented upstream sources. For teams running Java estates at scale, the support consolidation and concurrency improvements in this release are execution obligations, not future-state planning,” according to Mitch Ashley, VP and practice lead for software lifecycle engineering at The Futurum Group.

The Practical Takeaway

Java 26 isn’t an LTS release — Java 25 holds that designation as the next long-term support version. But for teams actively modernizing their Java estates or evaluating where to add AI capabilities, this release provides useful stepping stones: better performance, stronger security defaults, improved concurrency, and a new portfolio that simplifies the tooling ecosystem.

The case Oracle is making with Java 26 is straightforward: the infrastructure you’ve already built on Java is the right foundation for what comes next. This release is designed to help you close the gap between where your systems are today and where they need to be as AI workloads become operational.

Java 26 is available now at dev.java. JavaOne 2026 runs March 17–19 at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, California.

March 17, 2026
Oracle Unveils Java 24 with Focus on AI Integration, Post-Quantum Cryptography and Developer Experience

Oracle announced the release of Java 24 today at JavaOne 2025, marking the 15th consecutive on-time release in the six-month cadence that has transformed the Java ecosystem since 2018. This milestone release comes as Java approaches its 30th anniversary, with Oracle emphasizing three key areas of innovation: AI integration, post-quantum cryptography and improved developer experience — especially for newcomers.

AI-Ready Platform Enhancements

Java 24 introduces several features to make the language more effective for AI workloads. Now in its ninth incubator iteration, the Vector API enables developers to express vector computations that compile to optimized CPU instructions — critical for performance-intensive AI inference tasks.

“We are ensuring that Java is a contender for AI workloads, whether you are generating your code using a generative service or integrating them into your applications,” said Chad Arimura, vice president of developer relations at Oracle, during the opening keynote.

Other AI-focused improvements include primitive types in patterns and pattern-matching enhancements, which simplify the integration of business logic with primitive types from AI inference engines. Module import declarations also make incorporating AI services and libraries easier into Java applications.

Post-Quantum Cryptography Foundations

In response to future threats from quantum computing, Java 24 adds three significant security features: A Key Derivation Function API, the Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) and the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA).

These implementations align with FIPS standards and establish foundational building blocks for quantum-safe applications. Donald Smith, vice president of Java product management, explained the approach: “We’ve been through this before with the migration from TLS 1.2 to 1.3. We will provide the implementation, ensure it’s performant and ensure it’s stable.”

Oracle intends to backport these security features to long-term support releases as standards evolve, ensuring existing Java applications can be secured against “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks.

Simplifying the Developer Experience

One of the most significant challenges addressed in Java 24 is improving the onboarding experience for new developers. The release makes several improvements to reduce initial complexity through its “paving the on-ramp” initiative, including simple source files and instance main methods (in their fourth preview).

“To write your first Java program, you needed to understand 32 distinct principles of object-oriented programming,” said Georges Saab, senior vice president of Java at Oracle. “We just needed to find a way to make it easier.”

Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java Platform Group, demonstrated how a traditional “Hello World” program requiring an understanding of classes, public modifiers, static methods and system outputs can now be simplified to just void main() { println(“Hello World!”); }.

Oracle also announced Learn.java, a new website dedicated to teachers and students. This website complements Oracle’s partnership with the College Board to improve computer science education through the AP CSA program.

Enterprise Performance and Real-World Impact

The keynote featured testimonials from enterprise users, including Uber, which reported significant performance improvements after upgrading to newer JDK versions with the generational ZGC garbage collector. Mingmin Chen, head of Uber’s real-time team, shared that the upgrade reduced memory footprint and CPU utilization and improved query latency in their log search and analytics systems.

Mitch Ashley, VP and Practice Lead, DevOps and Application Development, The Futurum Group, highlighted several key aspects of Oracle’s Java 24 release. “Part of maintaining a healthy community and ecosystem for Java is simplifying the onboarding of new developers to the language. Updating Java with Vector API for AI workloads and quantum-safe algorithms and backporting these improvements to support Java’s extensive embedded base for years to come.” These improvements align with Oracle’s commitment to both innovation and backward compatibility.

Oracle emphasized that even without adopting new language features, upgrading to newer Java versions often delivers substantial performance benefits through continuous under-the-hood improvements.

“Developers are more excited about Java now than they’ve been in a long, long time, possibly ever,” said Saab. “And that’s really because the team can bring features to them very quickly, reliably.”

Java 24 is available for download today, and Java 25 — the next long-term support release — is scheduled for September 2025.

March 19, 2025
Best of 2024: Oracle Looks to Increase Pace of Java Innovation

With the latest release of Java, it should become simpler for DevOps teams that build and deploy applications with the most widely used programming language in the enterprise to innovate faster.

Georges Saab, senior vice president, Oracle Java Platform, said Java 22 is unique in the history of Java in that it is specifically designed to enable developers to invoke capabilities that are available in beta and preview while still working with the other functions supported in the venerable programming language. The overall goal is to increase the pace of innovation in environments based on Java applications, he added.

The latest edition of the Java Development Kit (JDK), for example, provides access in preview to capabilities developed under a Project Amber initiative that makes it simpler to express strings that include values computed at runtime while also improving the security of programs that compose strings from user-provided values and pass them to other systems.

Meanwhile, a Project Loom initiative, also available in preview, streamlines error handling and cancellation in a way that improves observability using an application programming interface (API) that enables structured concurrency, while a Scoped Values capability provides a way to share immutable data within and across threads.

A Project Panama initiative adds a Vector API that promises to compile instructions at runtime when, for example, making use of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques to extend artificial intelligence (AI) models.

In terms of additional capabilities that are now generally supported, Java 22 adds an API to enable Java programs to safely interoperate with code and data running in memory outside of the Java runtime.

Most importantly, from an application performance perspective, the latest iteration of the language streamlines garbage collection processes in memory to reduce the number of times a Java application might otherwise need to be paused.

Despite the number of alternative programming languages that exist, the bulk of enterprise-class applications continue to be built in Java. While many developers are at least familiar with multiple programming languages, most tend to favor one primary programming language. Java developers, especially, have shown little inclination to abandon the language even as other programming languages, such as JavaScript, have emerged that are either simpler to use or, as in the case of Rust, may provide more robust security capabilities.

Less clear is at what rate developers are upgrading to the latest iteration. In some cases, developers are still making use of version 8, 11 or, more recently, 17. It may be a while before the bulk of Java developers are ready to make the jump to Java 22. In addition, DevOps teams will then need to decide when there is enough critical mass to warrant upgrading runtime environments to support another iteration of Java.

One way or another, either via an edition of Java provided by Oracle or another vendor, the programming language isn’t likely to be supplanted any time soon. The challenge now is providing support not just for the various versions of Java that might be running but, inevitably, all the other software artifacts written in various languages that are now also routinely moving through DevOps pipelines.

January 3, 2025
Oracle Plans to Apply Generative AI to Java and SQL

Oracle today revealed it is developing a generative artificial intelligence assistant that leverages multiple large language models to create Java and SQL code, in a way that is tuned to an organization’s existing code bases and best practices that an organization employs.

Vijay Kumar, vice president of product marketing for application development services and developer relations for Oracle, said Oracle Code Assist will also enable DevOps teams to create code for provisioning IT infrastructure resources hosted on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) service.

Scheduled to become available at an unspecified future date, Oracle Code Assist will also be designed to update, upgrade and refactor code written in most modern programming languages. In addition, upgrading from older versions of programming languages will become more automated.

Pinpointing Bugs

Deployed as a plugin for integrated development environments (IDEs) such as JetBrains, IntelliJ IDEA, or Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Oracle Code Assist will be specifically trained to provide expert, opinionated feedback such as code snippets, dependency analysis, error mitigation alternatives, test cases, annotation, summarization and documentation that will make it simpler to pinpoint the precise location of bugs within an application, noted Kumar.

Benefits will include code suggestions based on learned context and patterns to reduce the time spent writing boilerplate code, summarizations of existing code, increased text coverage and faster code reviews.

Finally, any code generated will not be sourced from examples lacking non-permissive licenses, to minimize potential compliance issues.

In effect, Oracle is committing to training LLMs to generate code using samples it has vetted to eliminate hallucinations that occur when general-purpose LLMs such as ChatGPT are invoked. A general-purpose LLM is trained using samples of code of varying quality, pulled from across the web. As a result, they are more likely to create code that, for example, contains known vulnerabilities.

One immediate benefit of Oracle Code Assist should be an acceleration to a more recent version of Java. Oracle most recently made available Java 22, but many organizations are still running older, slower versions of Java that are less secure. Conversely, however, generative AI is also being used to accelerate the conversion of Java into other programming languages.

Ultimately, DevOps teams will be able to take advantage of Oracle Code Assist to create an automated feedback loop, noted Kumar. Additionally, he added, onboarding developers to existing application development projects will become much easier.

It’s not clear whether senior or junior developers will benefit most from generative AI. In theory, junior developers should be able to take on more complex tasks. However, senior developers may find that many of the manual tasks that today conspire to reduce their productivity are being eliminated.

One way or another, the overall pace at which applications are being developed and deployed is thanks to the rise of generative AI is now being accelerated. The only thing left to determine is how best to ensure the quality of the code being generated meets the requirements of enterprise IT organizations that today depend more on software than ever before.

May 7, 2024
Oracle Looks to Increase Pace of Java Innovation

With the latest release of Java, it should become simpler for DevOps teams that build and deploy applications with the most widely used programming language in the enterprise to innovate faster.

Georges Saab, senior vice president, Oracle Java Platform, said Java 22 is unique in the history of Java in that it is specifically designed to enable developers to invoke capabilities that are available in beta and preview while still working with the other functions supported in the venerable programming language. The overall goal is to increase the pace of innovation in environments based on Java applications, he added.

The latest edition of the Java Development Kit (JDK), for example, provides access in preview to capabilities developed under a Project Amber initiative that makes it simpler to express strings that include values computed at runtime while also improving the security of programs that compose strings from user-provided values and pass them to other systems.

Meanwhile, a Project Loom initiative, also available in preview, streamlines error handling and cancellation in a way that improves observability using an application programming interface (API) that enables structured concurrency, while a Scoped Values capability provides a way to share immutable data within and across threads.

A Project Panama initiative adds a Vector API that promises to compile instructions at runtime when, for example, making use of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques to extend artificial intelligence (AI) models.

In terms of additional capabilities that are now generally supported, Java 22 adds an API to enable Java programs to safely interoperate with code and data running in memory outside of the Java runtime.

Most importantly, from an application performance perspective, the latest iteration of the language streamlines garbage collection processes in memory to reduce the number of times a Java application might otherwise need to be paused.

Despite the number of alternative programming languages that exist, the bulk of enterprise-class applications continue to be built in Java. While many developers are at least familiar with multiple programming languages, most tend to favor one primary programming language. Java developers, especially, have shown little inclination to abandon the language even as other programming languages, such as JavaScript, have emerged that are either simpler to use or, as in the case of Rust, may provide more robust security capabilities.

Less clear is at what rate developers are upgrading to the latest iteration. In some cases, developers are still making use of version 8, 11 or, more recently, 17. It may be a while before the bulk of Java developers are ready to make the jump to Java 22. In addition, DevOps teams will then need to decide when there is enough critical mass to warrant upgrading runtime environments to support another iteration of Java.

One way or another, either via an edition of Java provided by Oracle or another vendor, the programming language isn’t likely to be supplanted any time soon. The challenge now is providing support not just for the various versions of Java that might be running but, inevitably, all the other software artifacts written in various languages that are now also routinely moving through DevOps pipelines.

March 26, 2024
Oracle Previews Latest Java 21 Innovations

Oracle today made generally available a Java 21 edition and provided early access to more than 15 proposed enhancements to the Java development kit (JDK).

Those enhancements were announced at an Oracle CloudWorld 2023 conference, including support for virtual threads to improve overall throughput and adding support for a vector application programming interface (API) that makes it simpler to build Java applications that involve artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Georges Saab, senior vice president of Oracle Java Platform and chair of the OpenJDK governing board, said the goal is to streamline access to the latest innovations that will be added to future versions of Java.

Specifically, via Project Amber, JDK 21 delivers improvements such as support for string Templates, record Patterns, pattern Matching for switch, unnamed Patterns and variables and unnamed classes and instance main methods.

In addition to the Vector API, Project Panama adds a Foreign Function & Memory API. Project Loom, in addition to virtual threads, adds scoped values and structured concurrency support.

There is also a more efficient garbage collection mechanism being proposed.

Oracle is committing to offering long-term support for Java 21 for at least eight years to encourage organizations to start working with this version of Java today. Oracle is also making available a Java Playground, an online sandbox on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) service where developers can create Java code using this edition without needing a local runtime or integrated development environment (IDE).

In general, Java has been experiencing a renaissance after more organizations began contributing to projects once the core platform became available under an open source OpenJDK license. In fact, the Java community is now adopting many concepts pioneered in other programming languages. That enables organizations to, for example, drive digital business transformation initiatives that depend on the modernization of legacy applications. As part of those efforts, the rate at which Java applications are being deployed in the cloud has substantially increased.

Despite the number of alternative programming languages, many enterprise IT organizations remain committed to Java. Rather than opting to retrain developers, it’s simply been more cost-effective to enable developers to continue to build applications using a programming language they already know.

Many organizations are currently in the process of shifting to Java 17. It’s not clear how many organizations will skip Java 17 and jump to Java 21 from previous versions of Java, but it’s clear Oracle is committed to making the lag time between moving from previous versions of Java to Java 21 much shorter.

Most organizations will find themselves continuing to deploy Java applications everywhere from the network edge to the cloud. These applications will be written in a programming language that has persevered for more than two decades and continues to evolve and mature for the next era of application development.

September 19, 2023
Oracle Bill is 5x Client’s Budget ¦ Toyota Out of Space

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: Birmingham looks like the Detroit of the UK—is it Oracle’s fault?
Plus: Was Toyota’s factory failure caused by running out of disk space? (more…)

September 7, 2023
Forking RHEL! Oracle and SUSE Join the Fight ¦ Silverman Sues AI Firms

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: SUSE announces a Red Hat Enterprise Linux fork after Oracle said a similar thing, and Sarah Silverman says OpenAI and Meta have stolen her words. (more…)

July 12, 2023
Oracle Makes Java 20 Platform Generally Available

At an Oracle DevLive Level Up event, Oracle today announced the availability of a Java 20 update that makes a range of innovations more accessible to application development teams.

Georges Saab, senior vice president of development for the Java Platform and chair of the OpenJDK Governing Board for Oracle, said the latest version of the venerable programming language builds on previous extensions made to the Java development kit (JDK) that exemplify how the pace of Java innovation is now increasing.

Specifically, seven JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs) are now supported in Java 20, including OpenJDK project Amber for record patterns and pattern matching for switch expressions and statements; enhancements from OpenJDK Project Panama to interconnect Java Virtual Machines (JVMs), features related to Project Loom that streamline the process of writing, maintaining and observing high-throughput, concurrent applications and a Function & Memory application programming interface (API) and Vector API.

Oracle also revealed Java 20 is supported by Java Management Service, an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) native service that provides a single pane of glass to help organizations manage Java runtimes and applications on-premises or on any cloud.

Finally, Oracle is making available an Oracle Java Universal SE Subscription that provides access to a pay-as-you-go offering that includes entitlement to GraalVM Enterprise, the Java SE Subscription Enterprise Performance Pack, access to the advanced features of the Java Management Service and the flexibility to upgrade at any pace an organization prefers.

Oracle Java Standard Edition (SE), GraalVM Enterprise and the Java SE Subscription Enterprise Performance Pack are also now available free of charge on OCI.

Despite the number of programming language alternatives that exist, many enterprise IT organizations remain committed to Java. Rather than opting to retrain developers, it’s simply been more cost-effective to enable developers to continue to build applications using a programming language they already know.

Java itself, meanwhile, has been experiencing a renaissance after more organizations began contributing to projects once the core platform became available under an open source OpenJDK license. In fact, the Java community is now adopting many concepts pioneered in other programming languages to enable organizations to, for example, drive digital business transformation initiatives that are dependent on legacy applications that are being modernized. As part of those efforts, the rate at which Java applications are being deployed in the cloud has substantially increased.

As part of those efforts, many organizations are currently in the process of shifting to Java 17. It’s not clear how many organizations will skip Java 17 and jump to Java 20 from previous versions of Java, but DevOps teams should expect to be supporting a wide range of versions of Java for years to come.

In fact, most organizations will deploy Java applications everywhere from the network edge to the cloud. The one thing all these applications will have in common is they will be written in a programming language that has persevered through two decades and appears to have enough staying power to stick around well into the next.

March 21, 2023
Dead Downtown: It’s YOUR Fault | Pentagon’s FOUR Cloud Vendors | Apple Adds MORE Price Flexibility

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: Home working is ripping the heart out of cities, the DoD’s bizarre cloud strategy, and Apple adds a $10,000 app price option. (more…)

December 8, 2022