Oracle’s Java team in 2026 will work toward milestones including a preview of value types, an incubation of code reflection, shipping AOT (ahead-of-time) code compilation, and finalizing the structured concurrency API.
These efforts and many others under OpenJDK projects such as Project Loom, for exploring JVM (Java Virtual Machine) features and APIs for implementing lightweight user-mode threads, and Project Valhalla, for augmenting the Java object model with value objects, were cited in a January 8 video presentation by Nicolai Parlog, a Java developer advocate at Oracle. Work on these features, though, does not imply they will be released in 2026.
AOT code compilation is part of Project Leyden, which is intended to improve startup time, time to peak performance, and the footprint of Java programs. The goals for AOT code compilation include improving startup and warmup time by making native code from a previous application run instantly available, when the HotSpot JVM starts. Project Leyden also will explore code cache portability and iterative training, allowing frameworks to train the cache. Inspectability of training data also will be examined.
