Glamsterdam Upgrade Enters Final Stretch with Key Dates Looming

The Ethereum Foundation's Glamsterdam upgrade is nearing completion, with key dates to watch as it approaches its final stages. Toni Wahrstätter, an Ethereum researcher, has stated that things are looking great for Glamsterdam and EIP-7928 (Block-Level Access Lists), which he believes will result in a significant throughput increase thanks to parallelism.

The upgrade is scheduled to undergo its first public test on devnets, with the Sepolia fork set for October 6, 2026. The mainnet launch is expected to occur in Q4 2026, although no official date has been confirmed. Wahrstätter believes that Glamsterdam will be one of the biggest forks seen yet, taking a correspondingly long time but yielding valuable results.

The upgrade's primary goals are to speed up processing (parallelization), expand capacity, and prevent database bloat (sustainability). ePBS is a crucial component of the upgrade, revamping the block validation pipeline and reducing trust assumptions. BALs will also bring parallelization to Ethereum.