This week’s Java roundup for September 29th, 2025, features news highlighting: JEP 527, Post-Quantum Hybrid Key Exchange for TLS 1.3; the proposed JDK 26 release schedule; the release of Mandrel 25 and Seed4j; milestone releases of GlassFish 8.0 and 7.1; the beta release of WildFly 38; and point releases of Spring AI, Helidon, Micronaut, LangChain4j, Gatherers4j and Keycloak.
OpenJDK
JEP 527, Post-Quantum Hybrid Key Exchange for TLS 1.3, has been elevated from its JEP Draft 8358541 to Candidate status. This JEP proposes to enhance the implementation of RFC 8446, Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3, using the Hybrid Key Exchange in TLS 1.3 specification, currently being drafted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), used in conjunction with JEP 496, Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism, delivered in JDK 24.
JDK 26
Build 18 of the JDK 26 early-access builds was made available this past week featuring updates from Build 17 that include fixes for various issues. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect, Java Platform Group at Oracle, formally proposed the release schedule for JDK 26 as follows:
- Rampdown Phase One (fork from main line): December 4, 2025
- Rampdown Phase Two: January 15, 2026
- Initial Release Candidate: February 5, 2026
- Final Release Candidate: February 19, 2026
- General Availability: March 17, 2026
The review period for this proposed schedule is expected to conclude on October 8, 2025.
GlassFish
The thirteenth milestone release of GlassFish 8.0.0 and the first milestone release of GlassFish 7.1.0 and deliver bug fixes, dependency upgrades and new features such as: an implementation of the MicroProfile 4.0 specification; performance improvements in GlassFish startup time with a redesign of the bootstrap process; and a refactored ProcessManager class for code readability and improved stability. Further details on these releases, including breaking changes, may be found in the release notes for version 8.0.0-M13 and version 7.1.0-M1.
Spring Framework
The release of Spring AI 1.0.3 ships with bug fixes, improvements in documentation and new features such as: a new GemFireAiSearchFilterExpressionConverter class that supports metadata filtering queries for the GemFireVectorStore class; and changes to the OpenAiRuntimeHints and AbstractEmbeddingModel classes as an initial implementation of improved ahead-of-time compilation for better support of GraalVM native images. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Helidon
The release of Helidon 4.3.0 introduces Helidon Data, Helidon MCP and Helidon Declarative. Helidon Data is an implementation of the repository pattern, a paradigm used in Jakarta EE specifications such as Jakarta Persistence and Jakarta Data. Helidon MCP allows developers to build their own MCP servers. Helidon Declarative, built on top of Helidon Inject, introduced in Helidon 4.2, adds new declarative features: HTTP Server Endpoint, Scheduling and Fault Tolerance. Please note that Helidon Declarative is an incubating feature and is subject to change. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes and InfoQ will follow up with a more detailed news story.
Micronaut
The Micronaut Foundation has released version 4.9.4 of the Micronaut Framework, based on Micronaut Core 4.9.12, features bug fixes, improvements in documentation and patch updates to modules: Micronaut SQL, Micronaut Data, Micronaut for Spring and Micronaut Control Panel. Other notable changes include: a resolution to issues with the abstract and inner classes on the @Mixin and @ClassImport annotations; and an update to the native-image.properties file that adds the io.micronaut.core.util.KotlinUtils property to complement the existing initialization arguments. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Quarkus
The release of Mandrel 25, a downstream distribution of GraalVM 25, provides native-images specifically tailored for Quarkus applications. New features include: support for Java Diagnostic Command (jcmd) and Native Memory Tracking with native-image; and the addition of new JFR events such as jdk.ObjectAllocationSample.
WildFly
The beta release of WildFly 38 delivers bug fixes, dependency upgrades and new features such as: continued support for Jakarta EE 11 with implementations of the Jakarta Persistence and Jakarta Context and Dependency Injection specifications in WildFly Preview; support for MicroProfile 7.1 that features the updated MicroProfile Telemetry and MicroProfile OpenAPI specifications. Further details on this release may be found in the list of resolved issues.
LangChain4j
The formal release (along with the fourteenth beta release) of LangChain4j 1.71 features new integrations: Docker MCP Transport; an implementation of the Oracle Document Loader; and support for GPUs with the Tornado VM GPULlama3.java API. Other notable changes include an implementation of ChromaDB 2.0 and a deprecation of the HuggingFaceChatModel and HuggingFaceLanguageModel classes in favor of the OpenAiChatModel class for both deprecated classes. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Seed4j
The release of Seed4j 2.0.0, formerly JHipster Lite, delivers bug fixes, improvements in documentation, dependency upgrades and new features such as: the migration from JHipster Lite 1.35.0 to Seed4j 2.0.0; and support for Angular Internationalization (i18n).
JHipster Lite, initially released in December 2021, was designed as an alternative to the original JHipster, initially released in December 2013, to offer business domain applications written in pure Java with Test-Driven Design (TDD) and the Hexagonal Architecture.
Further details on this release, including breaking changes, may be found in the release notes. InfoQ will follow up with a more detailed news story.
Gatherers4j
The release of Gatherers4j 0.12.0 ships with: support for JDK 25 and the Java Platform Module System (JPMS); and a refactored UniquelyOccurringGatherer class to support parallelization. Introduced in July 2024 by Todd Ginsberg, Director and Lead Engineer, Payments, at Deutsche Bank, Gatherers4j is a library of intermediate streams based on JEP 485, Stream Gatherers, delivered in JDK 24. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Keycloak
The release of Keycloak 26.4.0 features security enhancements, deeper integration, and improved server administration. New features include: passkeys for passwordless authentication of users; and support for the Financial-Grade API (FAPI) 2.0 Security Profile and Message Signing specifications. FAPI is an industry-specific profile of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
