Ethereum 2026 Roadmap: Biannual Upgrades and the Shift to Glamsterdam & Hegotá

Ethereum is moving faster than ever. To keep pace with the explosion of Layer 2 activity, the network has officially shifted to a biannual upgrade cycle for 2026, delivering two major network forks aimed at solving the L1 scaling and security bottlenecks.

H1 2026: The Glamsterdam Upgrade

The **Glamsterdam** fork (H1 2026) is primarily focused on **MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) fairness** and execution efficiency. The core technical addition is **EIP-7928**, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists. This allows the network to pre-verify transaction dependencies, significantly reducing the "gas waste" during periods of high congestion and ensuring more predictable fee structures for rollups.

Technical Objectives for 2026:

100M Gas Limit Target: A coordinated effort to increase the block gas limit to 100 million, effectively tripling the data availability for L2 sequencers.
128-bit zkEVM Security: Achieving full 128-bit provable security for all integrated zk-rollups, protecting against emerging quantum-compute threats.
Native Account Abstraction: Moving beyond the ERC-4337 middleware toward a core-level implementation that allows for "gasless" user onboarding.

H2 2026: Hegotá and the Cypherpunk Layer

The second upgrade, **Hegotá** (H2 2026), targets state growth management. By incorporating Verkle Trees, Hegotá aims to make Ethereum "stateless-ready," allowing nodes to verify blocks without needing to store the entire historical state. Furthermore, Vitalik Buterin has outlined a vision for a new "Cypherpunk-Principled" layer—a zero-knowledge-first communication protocol designed to enhance censorship resistance and native privacy for every Ethereum user.

Infrastructure Milestones:

Scalability

Aiming for 100,000+ combined TPS across the Ethereum L2 ecosystem.

UX

Cross-chain interoperability standards to eliminate 'bridge fragmentation'.

Security

Transitioning research to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) ready signatures.

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Conclusion

Ethereum’s 2026 roadmap is a masterclass in iterative engineering. By shifting to biannual forks, the network can tackle complex problems like state bloat and quantum security without the multi-year delays of the past. As we move toward Hegotá, the vision of Ethereum as a high-performance, decentralized world computer is closer than ever to being fully realized.