Ethereum’s Next Upgrade Has a Date on Hoodi, but Not on Mainnet
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Hoodi testnet on October 26, 2026. That gives developers and node operators a firm testing milestone. It is not a mainnet launch date or a promise of lower fees.
- Hoodi: October 26, 2026, at 17:42:48 UTC.
- Planned Hoodi block gas limit: 200 million.
- Mainnet activation: No date announced.
- What matters next: Client compatibility, performance under load and application behavior.
As of October 19, the Ethereum Foundation’s October 16 announcement schedules Hoodi for epoch 132, 352 and slot 4, 235, 264. The Foundation says the testnet’s block gas limit will rise to 200 million at the same epoch, matching Sepolia’s setting.
Sepolia first, Hoodi next
Glamsterdam activated on Sepolia on October 6, 2026, at 13:53:36 UTC, according to the Ethereum Foundation and the activation table in EIP-7773. Hoodi is the next scheduled testnet. Ethereum mainnet has no announced activation date. The Foundation says it will provide a separate update on mainnet timing.
There is a documentation mismatch to keep in mind: the EIP-7773 activation table lists Sepolia’s activation but leaves Hoodi blank, while the Foundation’s October 16 announcement gives Hoodi a date and time. The schedule is clear in the announcement, but those materials have yet to be updated consistently.
Glamsterdam is more than a bigger-block test
EIP-7773 currently lists 18 EIPs scheduled for inclusion in Glamsterdam. That is a planned set, and the details could still change. The proposal also lists five networking EIPs and two informational EIPs separately.
Several changes show the breadth of the upgrade:
- EIP-7732 formalizes parts of the proposer-builder handoff in Ethereum’s consensus protocol. A proposer is the validator responsible for proposing a block. A builder assembles its execution payload. The EIP covers commitments, payload reveals and payment logic.
- EIP-7928 introduces block-level access lists. These record the accounts and storage locations accessed during a block, along with post-transaction state changes. Clients may use this information to organize some state reads and validation work in parallel.
- EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 change how Ethereum charges for creating and accessing state, the account and contract data stored by the network.
The bundle also changes intrinsic transaction gas, calldata costs, access-list charges and block gas accounting. Calldata is the data included with a transaction, such as information a contract needs to process a request. These changes could give client teams, infrastructure providers and application developers different compatibility work to tackle.
What the 200 million gas limit does, and does not, mean
Hoodi’s planned 200 million block gas limit is a testnet setting. It determines the execution resources available to a block under the test’s rules. It does not mean every block will use that capacity, prove that clients can sustain it under heavy load or commit Ethereum mainnet to the same setting.
A higher limit also does not automatically lower transaction fees. Fees depend on demand and block usage, along with the final network configuration. Rollup costs depend on the data capacity those networks use, how they batch transactions and user demand. Hoodi’s setting cannot establish future mainnet blob prices or guarantee that savings will reach users.
Block access lists also have a gap between their intended purpose and what they prove. They give clients information that may help parallelize some work, but they do not make every task independent or prove on their own that validation bottlenecks will fall. Producing, transmitting and processing the lists takes resources too. Hoodi’s performance under representative load will matter.
Protocol rules cannot fix every builder-market problem
EIP-7732 moves parts of the proposer-builder exchange into protocol rules, including commitments, payload reveals and payment logic. That may reduce reliance on trusted middleware for this basic handoff, but it does not eliminate every relay or private arrangement. The protocol change alone also does not prove that block building will become less concentrated or that access to transaction order flow will broaden.
A payload timeliness committee is intended to check whether builders reveal payloads on time and whether the associated blob data is available. How clients and validators handle late, withheld or inconsistent payloads remains an operational question. There are no Hoodi results for those cases yet.
A testnet activation is only one signal. Operators and developers will also need to check whether independent client implementations agree, how blocks propagate, how validation performs under meaningful load and whether applications behave as expected. Testnet traffic and incentives do not perfectly match mainnet conditions.
What operators and developers need to check
Node operators need compatible execution and consensus client software to follow the upgraded chain. Validators also use validator-client software alongside a beacon node. Operators should check the upgrade guidance for their specific setup rather than assume one update covers everything.
Application and wallet developers should review gas estimation and assumptions such as fixed gas stipends, hardcoded limits and checks on how much gas remains during execution. RPC providers, block explorers, staking services and monitoring systems may also need to account for new logs, access-list information or timing requirements.
Historical transaction replay can help identify contracts that may be affected by new gas rules, but it cannot cover every future transaction or application state. It is a useful test, not a guarantee that every edge case has been found.
Key questions about Glamsterdam
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When is Glamsterdam scheduled to activate on Hoodi?
October 26, 2026, at 17:42:48 UTC, at epoch 132, 352 and slot 4, 235, 264.
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What is Hoodi’s planned gas limit?
The Foundation says it will rise to 200 million at the activation epoch. That is a Hoodi test setting, not a mainnet commitment.
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Has Ethereum set a mainnet date?
No. The Foundation has not announced one.
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Will Glamsterdam guarantee lower fees?
No. Fees depend on demand, usage and the final network configuration. The Hoodi schedule does not establish what mainnet fees or rollup costs will be.
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Do ETH holders need to act for the Hoodi test?
No. The scheduled activation is for a testnet, so ordinary mainnet ETH holders do not need to take action.
Hoodi gives Ethereum developers another checkpoint for a broad protocol upgrade. The key question is not just whether the test activates on schedule, but whether different clients and applications handle the new rules reliably under meaningful test conditions. No mainnet date has been announced. Further testing and coordination will inform that decision.
