Ethereum’s Glamsterdam Upgrade Enters Final Development Phase
Ethereum developers have moved the Glamsterdam upgrade into its final development stage, with devnets now testing the full set of planned protocol changes. The upgrade is expected in the second half of 2026 and could become Ethereum’s largest fork since the Merge.
What happened?
Ethereum developers have moved the Glamsterdam upgrade into its final development stage, with devnets now testing the full set of planned protocol changes. The upgrade is expected in the second half of 2026 and could become Ethereum’s largest fork since the Merge.
Why it matters
The milestone matters because Glamsterdam is being positioned as one of Ethereum’s most significant technical changes since the network shifted to proof-of-stake in 2022. While no firm activation date has been set, the upgrade is currently expected to go live in the second half of 2026.
Ethereum developers have entered the final stretch of work on Glamsterdam, the network’s next major protocol upgrade. Teams are now running developer networks, or devnets, that include the full set of Ethereum Improvement Proposals planned for the fork before the code moves to public testnets.
The milestone matters because Glamsterdam is being positioned as one of Ethereum’s most significant technical changes since the network shifted to proof-of-stake in 2022. While no firm activation date has been set, the upgrade is currently expected to go live in the second half of 2026.
Two of the headline components are enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation, tracked as EIP-7732, and Block-level Access Lists, tracked as EIP-7928. The first would move the separation between block builders and block proposers into Ethereum’s core protocol, a change developers hope will reduce offchain trust assumptions and address concerns around MEV-related manipulation.
Block-level Access Lists would let blocks declare in advance which accounts and smart-contract data they plan to access. That could help Ethereum clients preload data more efficiently, making execution faster, more predictable and easier to optimize.
Glamsterdam also includes a broader set of gas repricing changes that could alter the cost structure for using Ethereum. According to the source, developers are focused on testing, finalizing specifications and communicating the implications of those repricings to the wider Ethereum community before shipping the upgrade to testnets.