<p><strong>TLDR:</strong> JDK 26 went GA this week with 10 JEPs, and the Spring ecosystem pushed a coordinated wave of milestone releases across Boot, Security, AI, Integration, and AMQP. IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 landed with meaningful Java 26 and Spring tooling improvements. Azul Zulu OpenJDK images are now Docker Official Images, which matters if you care about supply chain hygiene.</p>
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<h2>JDK 26 GA</h2>
<p>JDK 26 is out with 10 JEPs, and JDK 27 early-access build 15 is already available if you want to stay ahead. Amazon Corretto 26 and LibericaJDK 26 (with 2,825 fixes) followed quickly. If you’re still on 21 LTS, nothing here forces your hand, but the scripting improvements and structured concurrency progress are worth tracking.</p>
<h2>Spring milestone wave</h2>
<p>Spring Boot 4.1.0-M4, Spring AI 2.0.0-M4, Spring Security, Spring Integration, and Spring AMQP all hit their third milestones this week, with Spring Data and Spring for Apache Kafka at M2. One notable detail: Spring Boot reverted its RabbitMQ/AMQP changes to a future release, so if you were watching that, it’s not landing yet. The pace of Spring AI milestones suggests the 2.0 GA timeline is getting serious.</p>
<h2>IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1</h2>
<p>This is a substantial release. The Spring Debugger now shows bean injection info as inline hints without requiring breakpoints, and remote debugging of Spring Boot apps in Docker containers is supported. Java 26 structured concurrency and virtual thread visualization in the debugger are in. The AI Assistant adds bring-your-own-key support for Anthropic and OpenAI, plus ACP agent protocol support including Cursor. Flyway migration autocomplete across JPA entities and migration scripts is a quiet win for anyone managing schema evolution.</p>
<h2>GraalVM Native Build Tools 1.0.0 GA</h2>
<p>After a long road through release candidates, Native Build Tools hits 1.0.0 GA. If you’ve been holding off on native image builds due to tooling instability, this is the signal to revisit. The companion post on the closed-world assumption this week is worth reading alongside it — it explains clearly why reflection configuration isn’t a bug in the tooling but a fundamental consequence of ahead-of-time compilation.</p>
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<h2>Also notable</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Vaadin 25.1:</strong> Copilot is now free for all users, Signals move to production-ready status with reactive state management in plain Java, and browserless UI testing (previously commercial TestBench) is now open source under Apache 2.0.</li>
<li><strong>Open Liberty 26.0.0.3:</strong> Adds <code>getAttributesForUser()</code> and <code>getUsersByAttribute()</code> to the UserRegistry API, and now supports Jandex index formats 11-13, removing the previous cap that forced workarounds with newer Jandex plugins.</li>
<li><strong>Kotlin 2.3.20:</strong> Introduces name-based destructuring declarations, experimental C/Objective-C interop mode for Multiplatform, and SWC integration for Kotlin/JS transpilation.</li>
<li><strong>Azul Zulu on Docker Hub:</strong> Zulu OpenJDK images are now Docker Official Images, TCK-verified and cryptographically signed, covering Java 8 through 25 with JDK, JRE, and headless variants.</li>
<li><strong>Kafka offset commits with Spring Boot:</strong> A practical post this week demonstrates how async processing can silently lose messages when offsets are committed before processing completes — worth reading if you’re using <code>ExecutorService</code> with Kafka consumers.</li>
<li><strong>jOOQ 3.21 redacted columns:</strong> Commercial distributions now support marking columns as redacted in code generation settings, masking values in debug logs — a small but useful production safety feature.</li>
<li><strong>GitHub Actions for Gradle v6:</strong> The caching component of <code>setup-gradle</code> moves to a closed-source library under Gradle’s Terms of Use. No functional restrictions now, but the direction is clear. Caching stays free for public repos.</li>
<li><strong>Spring AI MCP benchmark:</strong> Josh Long at KotlinConf cited Spring AI’s top performance in MCP benchmarks against Go, Python, and TypeScript — worth watching if you’re evaluating JVM for AI integration work.</li>
<li><strong>Apache Seata with Spring Boot:</strong> A solid walkthrough this week on distributed transaction management using <code>@GlobalTransactional</code>, including the XID propagation wiring that Spring Cloud handles automatically but RestClient and WebClient still need manually.</li>
</ul>


Spring Boot, JVM updates, and Java ecosystem news.

Java Digest

JDK 26 reached GA with 10 JEPs, with Amazon Corretto 26 and LibericaJDK 26 following quickly. The Spring ecosystem released a coordinated milestone wave covering Boot 4.1.0-M4, AI 2.0.0-M4, Security, Integration, AMQP, Data, and Kafka. IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 brings Spring Debugger inline hints, Docker remote debugging, Java 26 structured concurrency visualization, and bring-your-own-key AI assistant support. GraalVM Native Build Tools hit 1.0.0 GA. Other highlights include Vaadin 25.1 with free Copilot and open-source UI testing, Kotlin 2.3.20 with name-based destructuring, Azul Zulu images becoming Docker Official Images, and practical posts on Kafka offset commit pitfalls and Apache Seata distributed transactions with Spring Boot.

JDK 26 ships, Spring milestone wave rolls through the ecosystem