Java 26 was released on March 17, 2026. At JetBrains, we are committed to supporting the latest technologies in IntelliJ IDEA and adding useful enhancements for both stable and preview features. In this blog post, we will give you an overview of what Java 26 delivers and how it is supported in IntelliJ IDEA.

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Java 26 was released on March 17, 2026, delivering ten JEPs with five finalized. There are no new stable language features, but notable additions include HTTP/3 support in the HTTP Client API, AOT cache improvements for any garbage collector (Project Leyden), G1 GC throughput improvements, warnings for deep reflection on final fields, and removal of the Applet API. Preview features include primitive types in patterns (fourth preview), lazy constants (formerly stable values), structured concurrency, and PEM encoding/decoding. The Vector API continues as an incubator feature. IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 supports all Java 26 features from day one, including new inspections, debugger improvements for virtual threads in structured concurrency, and tooling for lazy constants. A JetBrains contributor also added min/max default methods to java.util.Comparator in the JDK.

Java 26 in IntelliJ IDEA