Java version history

Release table

JDK 1.0

• core language features
• support for graphics
• support for creating a Java applet
• libraries for I/O and networking

  JDK 1.1

• extensive retooling of the Abstract Window Toolkit event model
• inner classes added to the language
• JavaBeans
• Java Database Connectivity and support for sql
• Java remote method invocation and serialization
• reflection which supported Introspection only, no modification at runtime was possible.
• Just-in-time compilation on Microsoft Windows platforms, produced for JavaSoft by Symantec
• Internationalization and Unicode support originating from Taligent

  J2SE 1.2

• strictfp keyword
• The Swing graphical API was integrated into the core classes.
• Sun's JVM was equipped with a JIT compiler for the first time.
• Java plug-in
• Java IDL, an IDL implementation for Common [Object Request Broker Architecture|CORBA] interoperability
• Collections framework

  J2SE 1.3

• HotSpot JVM included
• RMI was modified to support optional compatibility with CORBA.
• Java Naming and Directory Interface included in core libraries
• Java Platform Debugger Architecture
• JavaSound
• Synthetic proxy classes

J2SE 1.4

• Language changes
• * assert keyword
• Library improvements
• * Regular expressions modeled after Perl regular expressions
• * Exception chaining allows an exception to encapsulate original lower-level exception
• * Internet Protocol version 6 support
• * I/O |Non-blocking I/O]
• * Logging API
• * Image I/O API for reading and writing images in formats like JPEG and PNG
• * Integrated XML parser and XSLT processor
• * Integrated security and cryptography extensions
• * Java Web Start included
• * Preferences API

Java SE 5

• Generics: provides compile-time type safety for collections and eliminates the need for most typecasts
• 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
• Autoboxing/unboxing: automatic conversions between primitive types and primitive wrapper classes
• Enumerations: the enum keyword creates a typesafe, ordered list of values ; previously this could only be achieved by non-typesafe constant integers or manually constructed classes
• Varargs: the last parameter of a method can now be declared using a type name followed by three dots ; 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, such as the standard classes
• Improved semantics of execution for multi-threaded Java programs; the new Java memory model addresses issues of complexity, effectiveness, and performance of previous specifications
• Static imports

• Automatic stub generation for RMI objects
• Swing: New skinnable look and feel, called synth
• The in package
• Scanner class for parsing data from various input streams and buffers

Versioning change

Java SE 6

• 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. This is believed to be due to the major changes in Update 10.
• Scripting Language Support : Generic API for tight integration with scripting languages, and built-in Mozilla JavaScript Rhino integration.
• Dramatic performance improvements for the core platform, and Swing.
• Improved Web Service support through JAX-WS.
• JDBC 4.0 support.
• Java Compiler API : an API allowing a Java program to select and invoke a Java Compiler programmatically.
• Upgrade of JAXB to version 2.0: Including integration of a StAX parser.
• Support for pluggable annotations.
• Many GUI improvements, such as integration of SwingWorker in the API, table sorting and filtering, and true Swing double-buffering.
• JVM improvements include: synchronization and compiler performance optimizations, new algorithms and upgrades to existing garbage collection algorithms, and application start-up performance.

Java 6 updates

Java SE 7

• JVM support for dynamic languages, with the new invokedynamic bytecode under JSR-292, following the prototyping work currently done on the Multi Language Virtual Machine
• Compressed 64-bit pointers
• Project Coin language features:
• Concurrency utilities under JSR 166
• New file I/O library 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
• Timsort is used to sort collections and arrays of objects instead of merge sort
• Library-level support for elliptic curve cryptography algorithms
• An XRender pipeline for Java 2D, which improves handling of features specific to modern GPUs
• New platform APIs for the graphics features originally implemented in version 6u10 as unsupported APIs
• Enhanced library-level support for new network protocols, including SCTP and Sockets Direct Protocol
• Upstream updates to XML and Unicode
• Java deployment rule sets

Java 7 updates

Java SE 8 (LTS)

• JSR 335, JEP 126: Language-level support for lambda expressions under Project Lambda and default methods 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. Sun later declared that lambda expressions would be included in Java and asked for community input to refine the feature. 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, default methods can also be used for multiple inheritance of behavior.
• , a JavaScript runtime which can run JavaScript code embedded within applications
• Unsigned integer arithmetic

Java 8 updates

Java SE 9

• JSR 376: Modularization of the JDK under Project Jigsaw
• JavaDB was removed from JDK
• , define a standard means to invoke the equivalents of various java.util.concurrent.atomic and sun.misc.Unsafe operations
• , 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
• : JShell is a REPL command-line interface for the Java language.
• , it includes a Java implementation of Reactive Streams, including a new Flow class that included the interfaces previously provided by Reactive Streams
• , 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
• , ahead-of-time compilation provided by GraalVM

History

Java 9 updates

Java SE 10

Java 10 updates

Java SE 11 (LTS)

Java 11 updates

Java SE 12

Java 12 updates

Java SE 13

Java 13 updates

Java SE 14

Java 14 updates

Java SE 15

Java 15 updates

Java SE 16

• — not yet stable

• Java 16 updates

Java SE 17 (LTS)

Java 17 updates

Java SE 18

• Java 18 updates

Java SE 19

Java 19 updates

Java SE 20

• Java 20 updates

Java SE 21 (LTS)

Java 21 updates

Java SE 22

Java SE 23

Java SE 24

Java SE 25 (LTS)

18. Java SE 26

Future features

• : Value classes, whose objects lack identity, but can in certain cases get an improved memory layout, 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.
• * Vector API, a portable and relatively low-level abstraction layer for SIMD programming. Its stabilization is dependent on Project Valhalla.
• : 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 in JIT mode:
• * enables making snapshots of whole JVM and restoring it with necessary adjustments.
• * , among other things, will allow partial or full AOT compiling, reducing overall dynamism to reduce dynamic compiling overhead.
• aims to extend the Java language's reach to alternative programming models with an enhancement to its reflective programming abilities, called code reflection. The stated main goal is to run Java code on GPUs, with SQL and other programming models as secondary targets.

  Implementations

Most commonly used implementations in 2025