This week's Java roundup for April 6th, 2026, features news highlighting: the fifth preview of Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof and switch; the proposed release schedule for JDK 27; point releases of Hibernate, LangChain4j, Keycloak and Google ADK for Java; a maintenance release of Helidon; a CVE in Spring Cloud Gateway; and the Junie CLI integrated in JetBrains IDEs.
OpenJDK
JEP 532, Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Fifth Preview), has been elevated from its JEP Draft 8379318 to Candidate status. This JEP proposes a fifth preview, without change, after four rounds of preview delivered in JDK 23 through JDK 26. This feature enhances pattern matching by allowing primitive types in all pattern contexts, and extending the instanceof and switch constructs to work with all primitive types.
JDK 27
Build 17 of the JDK 27 early-access builds was made available this past week featuring updates from Build 16 that include fixes for various issues. Further 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 27 as follows:
- Rampdown Phase One (fork from main line): June 4, 2026
- Rampdown Phase Two: July 16, 2026
- Initial Release Candidate: August 6, 2026
- Final Release Candidate: August 20, 2026
- General Availability: September 14, 2026
The review period for this proposed schedule is expected to conclude on Monday, April 13, 2026.
For JDK 27, developers are encouraged to report bugs via the Java Bug Database.
Jakarta EE
In his weekly Hashtag Jakarta EE blog, Ivar Grimstad, Jakarta EE Developer Advocate at the Eclipse Foundation, provided an update on Jakarta EE 12, writing:
In the Jakarta EE Platform call this [past] week, we discussed what would be needed for Jakarta NoSQL to be included as one of the specifications in Jakarta EE 12. There is still some reluctance among some of our members to include this specification, so please make your voice heard if you want to see Jakarta NoSQL in Jakarta EE 12. If you have some extra time on your hand, you can also step in and help the project address the issues that the platform project has requested to strengthen its position as a candidate for inclusion.
Several specifications are in progress for a milestone 2 release for Jakarta EE 12. These include: Jakarta Connectors 3.0; Jakarta Faces 5.0; Jakarta Transactions 2.1; and Jakarta JSON Processing 2.2.
Spring Framework
The Spring Cloud Gateway team has disclosed CVE-2026-22750, SSL Bundle Configuration Silently Bypassed in Spring Cloud Gateway, a vulnerability in version 4.2.0 where setting the configuration property, spring.ssl.bundle, was ignored without logging or warning, and defaulted to the SSL configuration. This could leave administrators with a false sense of security.
Hibernate
The release of Hibernate ORM 7.3.0.Final delivers bug fixes and new features such as: a new KeyType enumeration that allows the use of the overloaded find() method, defined in the Jakarta Persistence EntityManager interface, and the findMultiple() method, defined in the Session interface, to perform a load based on a natural ID in addition to the identifier; and a new @NaturalIdClass annotation that models a non-aggregated composite natural ID for the purpose of loading that aligns with the Jakarta Persistence @IdClass annotation modeling non-aggregated identifiers. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Open Liberty
The beta release of Open Liberty 26.0.0.4 ships with: support for JDK 26; new Open Liberty features jakartaee-11.0 (Jakarta EE 11 Platform), webProfile-11.0 (Jakarta EE 11 Web Profile), appAuthentication-3.1 (Jakarta Authentication 3.1), appAuthorization-3.0 (Jakarta Authorization 3.0) and appSecurity-6.0 (Jakarta Security 4.0); and an update to the mcpServer-1.0 feature that allows for dynamic registration of tools.
LangChain4j
The formal release (along with the twenty-third beta release) of LangChain4j 1.13.0 provides bug fixes and notable changes such as: new classes, RecoverabilityIT and PendingResponse, that allow for the execution state of an agentic system to be persistable and recoverable; a new ClassPathSkillLoader class that resolves a skills directory from the classpath instead of the file system; and a new HibernateContentRetriever class to retrieve data through Hibernate Query Language (HQL) queries. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Keycloak
The release of Keycloak 26.6.0 delivers bug fixes, dependency upgrades and new features such as: full support for RFC 7523, JSON Web Token (JWT) Profile for OAuth 2.0 Client Authentication and Authorization Grants, a specification that allows for using externally signed JWT assertions to request OAuth 2.0 access tokens; experimental support for the OAuth Client ID Metadata Document (CIMD) that allows for serving as an authorization server for the latest version of the Model Context Protocol specification; and full support for the Keycloak Test Framework that is based in JUnit 6. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Helidon
The release of Helidon 4.4.1 ships with bug fixes and notable changes such as: implementation of the Smile Data Format; the ability to configure an implementation of the LangChain4j McpClient interface via the Java SSLContext class to support the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol; and a restoration of lazy environment-variable traversal for nested configuration keys. Further details on this release may be found in the release notes.
Google Agent Development Kit
The release of the Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) for Java 1.1.0 provides bug fixes and new features such as: new classes, ChatCompletionsRequest and ChatCompletionsResponse, that will serve as data transfer objects for chat completion; support for Gemma models added to the LlmRegistry class; and a new EventData abstract class for tracing management. More details on this release may be found in the release notes.
JetBrains
JetBrains has announced that their Junie CLI, introduced in January 2025, can now detect and automatically connect to any JetBrains IDE installed on a developer's workstation. Benefits of this include: understanding the context of the project; automatically run tests on a mono-repository or a project with a non-trivial test setup; provide precise refactoring; building and debugging complex projects; and using semantic code navigation. This new feature is currently in beta and there are plans to support Android Studio. Please note that the Junie CLI is a subscription service.