Ethereum prepares for a second major upgrade in 2026

Ethereum developers this month agreed on the name and provisional timing of the network’s second major upgrade planned for 2026. The upgrade will be called Hegota and is expected to follow the Glamsterdam release.

Glamsterdam is Ethereum’s next major upgrade and is currently projected to roll out in the first half of 2026. That schedule places Hegota tentatively in the second half of the year, extending a faster release cadence than the network has historically followed.

The updated timeline reflects a shift in development strategy. Core contributors are aiming to deliver protocol changes more frequently rather than grouping many upgrades into releases that occur about once a year.

The approach follows criticism from parts of the Ethereum community earlier this year. Some users and builders argued that protocol development was not keeping pace with the network’s growth and rising technical demands.

Developers are expected to finalize the full scope of Glamsterdam at their next meeting in early January. Because of that timeline, no major Ethereum Improvement Proposals are expected to be formally announced for Hegota until at least February.

Even so, early discussion has begun around possible components of the upgrade. One likely source of features is work deferred from Glamsterdam due to time or complexity constraints.

In previous Ethereum upgrades, proposals that did not make a release were often moved to the following one. Developers anticipate a similar pattern with the transition from Glamsterdam to Hegota.

Initial conversations around Hegota have included Verkle Trees, a data structure intended to help nodes store and verify large volumes of information more efficiently. If adopted, the change could lower hardware requirements for node operators and make it easier for more participants to run nodes.

As with past upgrades, the name Hegota follows Ethereum’s convention of combining a Devcon host city with a star name. The title draws from Bogota for the execution layer and Heze for the consensus layer.

In a recent blog post, the Ethereum Foundation said Fusaka shipped PeerDAS alongside multiple minor features and noted that developers are now outlining the subsequent Hegota upgrade for the Ethereum.