OpenJDK 26 is out today as the newest GA reference version for the Java SE platform. With Java 26, it's finally time to say a goodbye to the Java Applet API.

Java Applets haven't been common on the web in years and modern web browsers not even supporting Java applets. [1]Since 2021 the Java Applet API was deprecated back in Java 17 while now with Java 26 is finally being removed. Farewell to the java.applet package and associated Java Applet classes.

Java 26 on the feature addition side has added support for the HTTP/3 protocol to the HTTP Client API. Libraries and applications can interact with HTTP/3 servers using the HTTP Client API with minimal code changes.

OpenJDK Java 26 also has improved its ahead-of-time "AOT" cache to work with any garbage collector (GC), including ZGC. The G1 garbage collector has also seen work to reduce synchronizations to help with higher throughput.

OpenJDK 26 also features the latest work on structured concurrency, lazy constants, and the Java Vector API.

More details on today's OpenJDK 26 release via [2]OpenJDK.org .

Additionally, also out today is [3]Eclipse OpenJ9 v0.58 that supports OpenJDK 26.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenJDK-17-Java-17

[2] https://openjdk.org/projects/jdk/26/

[3] https://github.com/eclipse-openj9/openj9/releases/tag/openj9-0.58.0