This article is about the Java programming language. For other uses, see History of Java.
The Java language has undergone several changes since JDK 1.0 as well as numerous additions of classes and packages to the standard library. Since J2SE 1.4, the evolution of the Java language has been governed by the Java Community Process (JCP), which uses Java Specification Requests (JSRs) to propose and specify additions and changes to the Java platform. The language is specified by the Java Language Specification (JLS); changes to the JLS are managed under JSR 901. In September 2017, Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java Platform, proposed to change the release train to "one feature release every six months" rather than the then-current two-year schedule.[1][2] This proposal took effect for all following versions, and is still the current release schedule.
In addition to the language changes, other changes have been made to the Java Class Library over the years, which has grown from a few hundred classes in JDK 1.0 to over three thousand in J2SE 5. Entire new APIs, such as Swing and Java2D, have been introduced, and many of the original JDK 1.0 classes and methods have been deprecated, and very few APIs have been removed (at least one, for threading, in Java 22[3]). Some programs allow the conversion of Java programs from one version of the Java platform to an older one (for example Java 5.0 backported to 1.4) (see Java backporting tools).
Regarding Oracle's Java SE support roadmap,[4] Java SE 25 (LTS) is the latest version as of September 2025, while versions 21, 17, 11 and 8 are the other still supported (long-term support − LTS) versions, where Oracle Customers will receive Oracle Premier Support. Oracle continues to release no-cost public Java 8 updates for development[4] and personal use indefinitely.[5]
In the case of OpenJDK, both commercial long-term support and free software updates are available from multiple organizations in the broader community.[6]
reflection which supported Introspection only, no modification at runtime was possible. (The ability to modify objects reflectively was added in J2SE 1.2, by introducing the AccessibleObject class and its subclasses such as the Field class.)
The release on December 8, 1998 and subsequent releases through J2SE 5.0 were rebranded retrospectively Java 2 and the version name "J2SE" (Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition) replaced JDK to distinguish the base platform from J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) and J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition). This was a very significant release of Java as it tripled the size of the Java platform to 1520 classes in 59 packages. Major additions included:[24]
strictfp keyword (by JVM 17 an obsolete keyword, should not be used in new code)
The Swing graphical API was integrated into the core classes.
Sun's JVM was equipped with a JIT compiler for the first time.
The February 6, 2002 release was the first release of the Java platform developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 59. Major changes included:[28][29]
The release on September 30, 2004 was originally numbered 1.5, which is still used as the internal version number. The number was changed to "better reflect the level of maturity, stability, scalability and security of the J2SE".[31] This version was developed under JSR 176.
Java SE 5 entered its end-of-public-updates period on April 8, 2008; updates are no longer available to the public as of November 3, 2009. Updates were available to paid Oracle customers until May 2015.[4]
Tiger added a number of significant new language features:[32][33]
Metadata: also called annotations; allows language constructs such as classes and methods to be tagged with additional data, which can then be processed by metadata-aware utilities (specified by JSR 175)
Enumerations: the enum keyword creates a typesafe, ordered list of values (such as Day.MONDAY, Day.TUESDAY, etc.); previously this could only be achieved by non-typesafe constant integers or manually constructed classes (typesafe enum pattern) (specified by JSR 201)
Varargs: the last parameter of a method can now be declared using a type name followed by three dots (e.g. void drawtext(String... lines)); in the calling code any number of parameters of that type can be used and they are then placed in an array to be passed to the method, or alternatively the calling code can pass an array of that type
Enhanced for each loop: the for loop syntax is extended with special syntax for iterating over each member of either an array or any Iterable, such as the standard Collection classes (specified by JSR 201)
Improved semantics of execution for multi-threaded Java programs; the new Java memory model addresses issues of complexity, effectiveness, and performance of previous specifications[34]
Scanner class for parsing data from various input streams and buffers
Java 5 is the last release of Java to officially support Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows ME,[36] while Windows Vista was the newest version of Windows that Java SE 5 was supported on prior to Java 5 going end-of-life in October 2009.[30]
This version introduced a new versioning system for the Java language, although the old versioning system continued to be used for developer libraries:
Both version numbers "1.5.0" and "5.0" are used to identify this release of the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition. Version "5.0" is the product version, while "1.5.0" is the developer version. The number "5.0" is used to better reflect the level of maturity, stability, scalability and security of the J2SE.
As of the version released on December 11, 2006, Sun replaced the name "J2SE" with Java SE and dropped the ".0" from the version number.[40] Internal numbering for developers remains 1.6.0.[41]
During the development phase, new builds including enhancements and bug fixes were released approximately weekly. Beta versions were released in February and June 2006, leading up to a final release that occurred on December 11, 2006.
Support for older Win9x versions dropped; unofficially, Java 6 Update 7 was the last release of Java shown to work on these versions of Windows.[citation needed] This is believed[by whom?] to be due to the major changes in Update 10.
Scripting Language Support (JSR 223): Generic API for tight integration with scripting languages, and built-in MozillaJavaScriptRhino integration.
Dramatic performance improvements for the core platform,[44][45] and Swing.
Improved Web Service support through JAX-WS (JSR 224).
Many GUI improvements, such as integration of SwingWorker in the API, table sorting and filtering, and true Swing double-buffering (eliminating the gray-area effect).
Java 6 can be installed to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) running on 64-bit (Core 2 Duo and higher) processor machines.[47] Java 6 is also supported by both 32-bit and 64-bit machines running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
Java 6 reached the end of its supported life in February 2013, at which time all public updates, including security updates, were scheduled to be stopped.[48][49] Oracle released two more updates to Java 6 in March and April 2013, which patched some security vulnerabilities.[50][51]
After Java 6 release, Sun, and later Oracle, released several updates which, while not changing any public API, enhanced end-user usability or fixed bugs.[52]
Java 7 was a major update that launched on July 7, 2011[90] and was made available for developers on July 28, 2011.[91] The development period was organized into thirteen milestones; on June 6, 2011, the last of the thirteen milestones was finished.[91][92] On average, 8 builds (which generally included enhancements and bug fixes) were released per milestone. The feature list at the OpenJDK 7 project lists many of the changes.
New file I/O library (defined by JSR 203) adding support for multiple file systems, file metadata and symbolic links. The new packages are java.nio.file, java.nio.file.attribute and java.nio.file.spi[106][107]
Timsort is used to sort collections and arrays of objects instead of merge sort
Lambda (Java's implementation of lambda functions), Jigsaw (Java's implementation of modules), and part of Coin were dropped from Java 7, and released as part of Java 8 (except for Jigsaw, which was released in Java 9).[110][111]
Java 7 was the default version to download on java.com from April 2012 until Java 8 was released.[112]
Oracle issued public updates to the Java 7 family on a quarterly basis[113] until April 2015 when the product reached the end of its public availability.[114] Further updates for JDK 7, which continued until July 2022, are only made available to customers with a support contract.[115]
JSR 335, JEP 126: Language-level support for lambda expressions (officially, lambda expressions; unofficially, closures) under Project Lambda[155] and default methods (virtual extension methods)[156][157][158] which can be used to add methods to interfaces without breaking existing implementations. There was an ongoing debate in the Java community on whether to add support for lambda expressions.[159][160] Sun later declared that lambda expressions would be included in Java and asked for community input to refine the feature.[161] Supporting lambda expressions also enables functional-style operations on streams of elements, such as MapReduce-inspired transformations on collections. Default methods can be used by an author of an API to add new methods to an interface without breaking the old code using it. Although it was not their primary intent,[156] default methods can also be used for multiple inheritance of behavior (but not state).
JEP 174: Project Nashorn, a JavaScript runtime which can run JavaScript code embedded within applications
Java 8 is not supported on Windows XP[163] but as of JDK 8 update 25, it can still be installed and run under Windows XP.[164] Previous updates of JDK 8 could be run under XP by downloading archived zip format file and unzipping it for the executable. The last version of Java 8 could run on XP is update 251.
From October 2014, Java 8 was the default version to download (and then again the download replacing Java 9) from the official website.[165] "Oracle will continue to provide Public Updates and auto updates of Java SE 8, Indefinitely for Personal Users".[166]
Java SE 9 was made available on September 21, 2017[249] due to controversial acceptance of the current implementation of Project Jigsaw by Java Executive Committee[250] which led Oracle to fix some open issues and concerns and to refine some critical technical questions. In the last days of June 2017, Java Community Process expressed nearly unanimous consensus on the proposed Module System scheme.[251]
JEP 213: Milling Project Coin, allow @SafeVarargs on private instance methods; Allow effectively-final variables to be used as resources in the try-with-resources statement; Allow diamond with anonymous classes if the argument type of the inferred type is denotable; Complete the removal, begun in Java SE 8, of underscore from the set of legal identifier names; Support for private methods in interfaces
JEP 282: jlink: The Java Linker, create a tool that can assemble and optimize a set of modules and their dependencies into a custom run-time image. It effectively allows to produce a fully usable executable including the JVM to run it
At JavaOne 2011, Oracle discussed features they hoped to release for Java 9 in 2016.[259] Java 9 should include better support for multi-gigabyte heaps, better native code integration, a different default garbage collector (G1, for "shorter response times")[260] and a self-tuning JVM.[261] In early 2016, the release of Java 9 was rescheduled for March 2017[262] and later again postponed four more months to July 2017.[263]
The first of these JEP 286 Local-Variable Type Inference, allows the var keyword to be used for local variables with the actual type calculated by the compiler. Due to this change, developers can do the following instead of manually specifying the variable's type:
JDK 11 was released on September 25, 2018 and the version is currently open for bug fixes. It offers LTS, or Long-Term Support. Among others, Java 11 includes a number of new features, such as:[275]
A number of features from previous releases were dropped; in particular, Java applets and Java Web Start are no longer available. JavaFX, Java EE and CORBA modules have been removed from JDK.[276]
The preview feature JEP 325 extends the switch statement so it can also be used as an expression, and adds a new form of case label where the right hand side is an expression. No break statement is needed. For complex expressions a yield statement can be used. This becomes standard in Java SE 14.
JDK 13 was released on September 17, 2019. Java 13 includes the following new features, as well as "hundreds of smaller enhancements and thousands of bug fixes".[336]
JDK 14 was released on March 17, 2020. Java 14 includes the following new features, as well as "hundreds of smaller enhancements and thousands of bug fixes".[341]
JDK 15 was released on September 15, 2020. Java 15 adds e.g. support for multi-line string literals (aka Text Blocks). The Shenandoah and Z garbage collectors (latter sometimes abbreviated ZGC) are now ready for use in production (i.e. no longer marked experimental). Support for Oracle's Solaris operating system (and SPARC CPUs) is dropped (while still available in e.g. Java 11). The Nashorn JavaScript Engine is removed. Also removed some root CA certificates.
JEP 360 Sealed Classes adds sealed classes and interfaces that restrict which other classes or interfaces may extend or implement them. Only those classes specified in a permits clause may extend the class or interface.
Together with records, sealed classes are sum types. They work well with other recent features like records, switch expressions, and pattern matching for instance-of. They all form part of a system for "Pattern matching in Java" first discussed by Gavin Bierman and Brian Goetz, in September 2018.[348]
JDK 16 was released on March 16, 2021. Java 16 removes Ahead-of-Time compilation (and Graal JIT) options.[354] The Java implementation itself was and is still written in C++, while as of Java 16, more recent C++14 (but still not e.g. C++17 or C++20) is allowed. The code was also moved to GitHub, dropping Mercurial as the source control system.
JDK 17 was released in September 2021.[360] Java 17 is the 2nd long-term support (LTS) release since switching to the new 6-month release cadence (the first being Java 11).
JEP 406 extends the pattern matching syntax used in instanceof operations to switch statements and expressions. It allows cases to be selected based on the type of the argument, null cases and refining patterns
Objecto=...;returnswitch(o){casenull->"Null";caseStrings->"String %s".formatted(s);caseLongl->"long %d".formatted(l);caseDoubled->"double %f".formatted(d);caseIntegeri&&i>0// refining patterns->"positive int %d".formatted(i);caseIntegeri&&i==0->"zero int %d".formatted(i);caseIntegeri&&i<0->"negative int %d".formatted(i);default->o.toString();};
JEP 405 allows record patterns, extending the pattern matching capabilities of instanceof operators, and switch expressions, to include record patterns that explicitly refer to the components of the record.
Java 21 was released on 19 September 2023.[413] The 32-bit version of Java for Windows on x86 was deprecated for removal with this release. The following JEPs were added, including eight JEPs that graduated from the incubating and preview stages, compared to Java 20 which only had previewing and incubating JEPs. Java 21 introduces features first previewed in Java 17 (pattern matching for switch statements) and Java 19 (record patterns). All JEPs added with Java 21 include the following:
The specification for Java 25 was finalized in July 2025, with 18 JEPs making it into the release.[436] Java 25 was released on September 16, 2025.[437]
Project Valhalla: Value classes, whose objects lack identity, but can in certain cases get an improved memory layout (with less indirection), or have their allocation optimized away entirely.
Improved interoperability with native code, to enable Java source code to call functions and use data types from other languages, in a way that is easier and has better performance than today (this part of Project Panama is getting stabilized in Java 22 under JEP 454: Foreign Function & Memory API).
Vector API, a portable and relatively low-level abstraction layer for SIMD programming. Its stabilization is dependent on Project Valhalla.
Project Lilliput: Reduce the size of Java object headers. First down to 64 bits, and then down to 32 bits.
Reducing startup time and warm-up time (time to peak performance) in JIT mode:
Project CRaC enables making snapshots of whole JVM (together with the running application) and restoring it with necessary adjustments (reopening files, sockets, etc).
Project Leyden, among other things, will allow partial or (in the long term) full AOT compiling, reducing overall dynamism (by adopting so called "closed-world constraints") to reduce dynamic compiling overhead.
Project Babylon aims to extend the Java language's reach to alternative programming models with an enhancement to its reflective programming abilities, called code reflection (i.e., reflection over code itself). The stated main goal is to run Java code on GPUs, with SQL and other programming models as secondary targets.
The officially supported Java platform, first developed at Sun and now stewarded by Oracle, is Java SE. Releases are based on the OpenJDK project, a free and open-source project with an open development model. Other Java implementations exist, however—in part due to Java's early history as proprietary software. In contrast, some implementations were created to offer some benefits over the standard implementation, often the result of some area of academic or corporate-sponsored research. Many Linux distributions include builds of OpenJDK through the IcedTea project started by Red Hat, which provides a more straightforward build and integration environment.
Visual J++ and the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine were created as incompatible implementations. After the Sun v. Microsoft lawsuit, Microsoft abandoned it and began work on the .NET platform. In 2021, Microsoft started distributing compatible "Microsoft Build of OpenJDK" for Java 11 first then also for Java 17. Their builds support not only Windows, but also Linux and macOS.
Other proprietary Java implementations are available, such as Azul's Zing. Azul offers certified open source OpenJDK builds under the Zulu moniker.
Prior to the release of OpenJDK, while Sun's implementation was still proprietary, the GNU Classpath project was created to provide a free and open-source implementation of the Java platform. Since the release of JDK 7, when OpenJDK became the official reference implementation, the original motivation for the GNU Classpath project almost completely disappeared, and its last release was in 2012.
The Apache Harmony project was started shortly before the release of OpenJDK. After Sun's initial source code release, the Harmony project continued, working to provide an implementation under a lax license, in contrast to the protective license chosen for OpenJDK. Google later developed Android and released it under a lax license. Android incorporated parts of the Harmony project, supplemented with Google's own Dalvik virtual machine and ART. Apache Harmony has since been retired, and Google has switched its Harmony components with equivalent ones from OpenJDK.
Both Jikes and Jikes RVM are open-source research projects that IBM developed.
Several other implementations exist that started as proprietary software, but are now open source. IBM initially developed OpenJ9 as the proprietary J9,[438] but has since relicensed the project and donated it to the Eclipse Foundation. JRockit is a proprietary implementation that was acquired by Oracle and incorporated into subsequent OpenJDK versions.
Amazon developed Corretto,[439] a no-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of OpenJDK with long-term support that includes performance enhancements and security fixes. Corretto is certified as compatible with the Java SE standard and is used internally at Amazon for many production services.
The Eclipse Temurin project,[440] formerly known as AdoptOpenJDK, provides prebuilt OpenJDK binaries from a fully open source build farm. The project transitioned to the Eclipse Foundation in 2021 as part of the Adoptium Working Group, which ensures high-quality, vendor-neutral Java runtime distributions.
BellSoft Liberica JDK[441] is another OpenJDK-based implementation that provides builds for a wide range of platforms, including support for embedded systems and older architectures. It offers both standard and "Full" versions that include additional components like JavaFX.
SAP Machine[442] is SAP's downstream distribution of OpenJDK, optimized for SAP applications and deployments. It provides both short-term and long-term support releases aligned with OpenJDK's release schedule.
Alibaba Dragonwell[443] is a downstream version of OpenJDK with some in-house optimizations. It includes enhancements in startup performance, footprint, and throughput.
GraalVM[444] represents a significant departure from traditional Java implementations. Developed by Oracle Labs, it provides a polyglot virtual machine supporting multiple languages beyond Java, including JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and R. GraalVM includes an advanced just-in-time compiler written in Java and supports ahead-of-time compilation for creating native executables, substantially reducing startup time and memory footprint.
Red Hat build of OpenJDK[445] is Red Hat's supported distribution of OpenJDK for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows, providing long-term support and regular updates as part of Red Hat's subscription offerings.
The Semeru Runtime,[446] based on the Eclipse OpenJ9 JVM and OpenJDK class libraries, is IBM's no-cost Java runtime optimized for cloud deployments. It offers improved startup time, smaller memory footprint, and better throughput compared to HotSpot-based implementations.
^"End of Java 7 Public Updates". After April 2015, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 7 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 7 downloads already posted as of April 2015 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on the Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download in order to continue receiving public updates and security enhancements. [..] July 2015: Updates for Java 7 are no longer available to the public. Oracle offers updates to Java 7 only for customers who have purchased Java support or have Oracle products that require Java 7.
^Stahl, Henrik (2014-07-11). "Updated: The future of Java on Windows XP". Oracle Corporation. Archived from the original on 2014-11-11. Retrieved 2014-11-11. JDK 8 is not supported on Windows XP. Early versions of JDK 8 had known issues with the installer on Windows XP that prevented it from installing without manual intervention. This was resolved in JDK 8 Update 25. The important point here is that we can no longer provide complete guarantees for Java on Windows XP, since the OS is no longer being updated by Microsoft. We strongly recommend that users upgrade to a newer version of Windows that is still supported by Microsoft in order to maintain a stable and secure environment.
^Wieldt, Tori (October 27, 2014). "Java SE 8 on Java.com". blog.oracle.com. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved November 24, 2014.
