Java 26 Ships March 17 — AOT Cache Now Works With ZGC, HTTP/3 Added, Applet API Formally Removed After 9 Years of Deprecation

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Oracle released Java 26 on March 17, 2026 with 10 JEPs, 5 final. The headline technical change is JEP 516: the HotSpot AOT cache now supports ZGC and all other GCs via GC-agnostic object serialization, removing a critical startup-performance gap for low-latency workloads. HTTP/3 support and a preview PEM cryptographic encoding API are new library additions. The Applet API, deprecated since JDK 17 in 2021, is finally removed. No stable language features this release — structured concurrency and primitive patterns remain in fourth preview.