Ethereum upgrades through scheduled hard forks, each tested on test networks first. The next one is Glamsterdam, and the one after it, Hegotá, is being scoped now. Dates move as testing goes, so the best place for the current timeline is Forkcast, which tracks every fork from planning to activation. The stories below are the steps that matter most right now.
Forkcast's upgrade schedule · Glamsterdam on Forkcast · Answer reviewed 2026-10-04
Glamsterdam goes live on Sepolia, a test network, on October 6. It is the rehearsal before the real network.
Ethereum's next mainnet fork activated on Sepolia on schedule, and infrastructure teams are now instrumenting the data volume the upgrade generates for production readiness.
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The next step after that. A second test network, Hoodi, is pencilled in for October 27 if Sepolia goes well.
The All Core Devs Consensus (ACDC) call tentatively set October 27 for Hoodi's Glamsterdam fork, pending Sepolia's success, and narrowed EIP-8365 to a deposit guard change for Hegotá, splitting off its forced-exit rule for later.
What Glamsterdam changes for users. Each block gets room for far more activity, which should keep fees down.
Ethereum's next upgrade is testing higher block throughput limits on its public test network ahead of an October 6 Sepolia fork, marking capacity improvements for the ecosystem.
What comes after Glamsterdam, and why Vitalik Buterin expects it to be the last ordinary upgrade.
After Hegotá, Ethereum upgrades will shift toward hybrid blockchain and advanced cryptography, with slot times dropping to 4-8 seconds by 2030.
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