Java 16

Java 16 was released in March 2021. It is not an LTS release and will be obsoleted at the release of Java 17 in September 2021.

Status: General Availability

Page last updated: 2021-02-08, EA 35

Schedule:

• 2020-12-10 Rampdown Phase One

• 2021-01-14 Rampdown Phase Two

• 2021-02-04 Initial Release Candidate

• 2021-02-18 Final Release Candidate

• 2021-03-16 General Availability

Resources

• Java 16 Early-Access Builds (note: OpenJDK builds only; no Oracle builds)

• Release notes

• Jave SE 16 Platform

Selected Changes Targeted to Java 16

• JEP 357: Migrate from Mercurial to Git

• JEP 369: Migrate to GitHub

• JEP 380: Unix-Domain Socket Channels

• JEP 386: Alpine Linux Port

• JEP 390: Warnings for Value-Based Classes

• JEP 394: Pattern Matching for instanceof

• JEP 395: Records

• JEP 396: Strongly Encapsulate JDK Internals by Default

• JEP 397: Sealed Classes (Second Preview)