Glamsterdam is Ethereum's next hard fork. It went live on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, 2026 and is scheduled for the Hoodi testnet on October 26, 2026 at 17:42 UTC, where the block gas limit rises from 60 million to 200 million at the fork. Mainnet has no date: the Ethereum Foundation lists Q4 2026 as a target and says the date is not confirmed.
Today, October 16, 2026, Ethereum mainnet still runs with the 60M gas limit at about 0.06 gwei, so a standard transfer costs around ~$0.003 and a swap around ~$0.03. Nothing changes for your wallet until the mainnet fork, and you do not need to do anything with your ETH.
The short version
- Sepolia done, Hoodi next. Sepolia forked on October 6 at 13:53 UTC. Hoodi forks on October 26 at 17:42 UTC. Client releases for Hoodi are due by October 16.
- Mainnet is not scheduled. The roadmap says Q4 2026, unconfirmed. Core developers will set the mainnet date after Hoodi runs cleanly.
- 200 million gas per block. Hoodi raises the limit from 60M to 200M at the fork epoch. On mainnet, 200M is the target developers agreed on; validators set the actual limit.
- Users do nothing. No wallet update, no token swap. Anyone asking you to "upgrade" your ETH is running a scam. Node operators must update both clients before each fork.
1. What is Glamsterdam?
Glamsterdam is the hard fork that follows Fusaka. The name joins Gloas, the consensus-layer part, and Amsterdam, the execution-layer part. The scope is defined in EIP-7773, and the Ethereum Foundation's testnet announcement lists eighteen scheduled EIPs plus a handful of networking changes.
Two of them do most of the work. EIP-7732, enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS), moves the handoff between the validator that proposes a block and the builder that fills it into the protocol, so the network stops depending on outside relays for that step. EIP-7928, block-level access lists (BALs), makes every block declare up front which accounts and storage slots it touches, so clients can execute independent transactions in parallel instead of one after another.
The rest of the list reprices work that grows the state (EIP-8037, EIP-8038), raises the floor cost of calldata (EIP-7976) and of access lists (EIP-7981), lowers the intrinsic cost of a simple transfer (EIP-2780), raises the maximum contract size (EIP-7954), adds a SLOTNUM opcode (EIP-7843), emits a log on every ETH transfer (EIP-7708) and removes the ETH burn in SELFDESTRUCT (EIP-8246). All of it serves one aim: a bigger block that nodes can still verify on ordinary hardware, which is why the gas limit can rise to 200 million.
2. When is the Glamsterdam upgrade? Key dates
Three networks fork in sequence. Each date below comes from the client teams' own coordination repositories, and the status column is what we can confirm as of October 16, 2026.
| Network | Activation (UTC) | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Sepolia testnet | October 6, 2026, 13:53:36 (epoch 353,024) | Done. Finalized at 14:24 UTC. |
| Hoodi client releases | By October 16, 2026 | Due. Set on the October 8 core-dev call. |
| Hoodi testnet | October 26, 2026, 17:42:48 (epoch 132,352) | Scheduled. Gas limit rises to 200M at the same epoch. |
| Mainnet | Not set. Roadmap target: Q4 2026 | Open. Decided after Hoodi. |
The Hoodi parameters were merged into the eth-clients/hoodi configuration on October 9: epoch 132352, slot 4235264, Unix timestamp 1793036568, with the gas limit schedule set to 200,000,000 at that epoch. ETH Daily's summary of the call and Christine Kim's notes on ACDE #247 both record the October 16 deadline for client releases, which gives Hoodi node operators about ten days to update.
For mainnet, ethereum.org's roadmap page shows "Q4 2026 · Date not yet confirmed", and the Foundation's announcement says the Hoodi and mainnet dates would be decided separately. After the Sepolia fork, ETH Daily reported that developers see December 2 as the earliest mainnet date, pending confirmation. The consensus-layer call on October 15 (ACDC #189) has Glamsterdam and Hegotá on its agenda; a mainnet date is expected only once Hoodi has run for a while.
3. Will Glamsterdam lower Ethereum gas fees?
Probably, during busy periods, and only once it reaches mainnet. A gas fee is the gas a transaction uses multiplied by the price per unit of gas, and that price is set by demand for block space. Glamsterdam leaves the formula alone and changes the supply side: a block can hold 200 million gas instead of 60 million, so the same demand spreads over more than three times the capacity before the base fee starts to climb.
The catch is that mainnet fees are already close to the floor. On October 16, 2026 the Normal gas price on our tracker is 0.06 gwei, a standard ETH transfer costs about ~$0.003 and a swap about ~$0.03. CryptoTicker, using ultrasound.money block data, put the 24-hour average base fee at 0.0673 gwei on October 11. More capacity cannot push a fee that is already below a cent much lower. Where it matters is the next spike: a memecoin rush or an airdrop claim has to fill 200M gas per block before fees react the way they did at 60M.
Ethereum and the main rollups right now
| Network | Gas price | ETH transfer | Token swap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | 0.06 gwei | ~$0.003 | ~$0.03 |
| Base | 0.006 gwei | <$0.001 | ~$0.003 |
| Arbitrum | 0.02 gwei | ~$0.001 | ~$0.009 |
| Optimism | <0.001 gwei | <$0.001 | <$0.001 |
Two details cut the other way. Simple transfers between existing accounts need less gas under EIP-2780, which ethereum.org says could make them up to 71% cheaper in gas units. Deployments and anything that creates new state cost more under EIP-8037, and calldata-heavy transactions pay a higher floor under EIP-7976. So a plain ETH transfer should use less gas after the fork, while deploying a contract uses more.
Layer 2 fees barely move. Rollups such as Base and Arbitrum already settle for fractions of a cent, and their cost depends mostly on blob space, which this fork does not touch.
4. What changes for developers and smart contracts?
If you deploy contracts or run a dapp, the repricing is what to test. The Ethereum Foundation published a guide to the repricing impact for smart contract developers in August. State creation (new accounts, new storage slots, deployed bytecode) costs more under EIP-8037, state access is repriced under EIP-8038, calldata has a higher floor cost under EIP-7976, and access lists cost more under EIP-7981. Gas refunds no longer count against the block limit under EIP-7778. The guide's finding from replaying mainnet history is that most contracts are unaffected, and that the ones that break rely on hardcoded gas assumptions such as the 2,300 gas stipend of Solidity's transfer and send, fixed gas values in low-level calls, or logic that branches on gasleft(). The Foundation keeps a checker for affected contracts, and Sepolia already runs all of this, so re-run your gas benchmarks there.
Three changes add room. The maximum contract size goes from about 24 KiB to 64 KiB (EIP-7954), so large contracts no longer need to be split for size alone. EIP-7997 adds a deterministic factory predeploy for same-address deployments across chains. EIP-7708 makes every ETH transfer, including internal ones, emit a log, so indexers can follow value movement without tracing.
Glamsterdam adds no new transaction type and does not change the JSON-RPC calls you use to send a transaction, so SDKs such as ChainGate keep working as before. What changes is the gas your contract calls consume, which is why estimating the fee right before sending remains the safe habit.
5. What do node operators and validators have to do?
Update both clients before each fork: the execution client and the consensus client. The Foundation's announcement is explicit that validators must update the beacon node and the validator client, because ePBS changes the duties a validator performs in each slot.
For Sepolia the compatible releases were Besu 26.9.0, Erigon 3.7.1, Ethrex 29.0.1, go-ethereum 1.17.7, Nethermind 2.1.0 and Reth 2.7.0 on the execution side, and Grandine 3.0.0-rc.0, Lighthouse 8.3.0-rc.0, Lodestar 1.49.0, Nimbus 26.10.0, Prysm 7.2.1 and Teku 26.9.1 on the consensus side. Hoodi needs the releases due by October 16; look for an explicit Hoodi line in each client's release notes before upgrading.
The gas limit is a validator setting, not something the fork forces on mainnet. On Sepolia, Prysm and Teku defaulted to 60M after activation and validators who wanted 200M had to configure it (Teku: `--validators-builder-registration-default-gas-limit=200000000`). On Hoodi the configuration moves the limit at the fork epoch. Mainnet validators will face the same choice when the time comes, so watch the client defaults.
6. Do ETH holders and wallet users need to do anything?
No. There is no new token, no migration and no wallet action. ethereum.org puts it plainly: there is nothing you need to do, and anyone telling you to "upgrade" your ETH is trying to scam you. Your ETH, your tokens and your addresses are the same before and after the fork.
What you may notice, once mainnet forks, is a transfer that uses fewer gas units and, in a congested week, a fee that climbs more slowly than it used to. Exchanges usually pause deposits and withdrawals for an hour or two around a mainnet fork. That is the only practical disruption to plan for, and only once a mainnet date exists.
7. What is confirmed and what is still open?
Confirmed
- Sepolia activated Glamsterdam on October 6, 2026 at 13:53:36 UTC and finalized the fork at 14:24 UTC.
- Hoodi activates on October 26, 2026 at 17:42:48 UTC, epoch 132352, with the gas limit schedule set to 200M at that epoch. The configuration is merged.
- Client releases for Hoodi are due by October 16, 2026.
- The EIP list is frozen for the testnets, although the Foundation notes the meta EIP is still a draft and scope can change before mainnet.
Still open
- The mainnet date. Q4 2026 is a target, December 2 is a reported earliest date, and neither is a decision.
- The mainnet gas limit. 200M is the agreed target; validators set the limit, and on Sepolia it started near 64 million an hour after the fork because clients defaulted to 60M.
- Whether Hoodi holds its date. The schedule has moved more than once this year, from the first half of 2026 to Q3 and then to Q4, and Sepolia itself was rescheduled before landing on October 6.
8. What comes after Glamsterdam?
Hegotá is next. On the October 8 call, developers updated the status of ten newly proposed EIPs for it, and the October 15 consensus call has it on the agenda next to Glamsterdam. There is no timeline for it beyond "after Glamsterdam".
We will update this page when Hoodi forks and when a mainnet date is announced. The update log below records what changed and when. In the meantime, the Ethereum gas tracker shows the live price per gas, and the guide on what gas fees are explains the base fee and priority tip that this upgrade leaves untouched.
Updates to this article
- October 15, 2026: first published. Hoodi date, client release deadline and EIP list taken from the eth-clients repository, the Ethereum Foundation announcement and the ACDE #247 notes.
Frequently asked questions
When is the Glamsterdam mainnet upgrade?
No date has been set. ethereum.org lists Q4 2026 with the note that the date is not confirmed, and the Ethereum Foundation said in its testnet announcement that the mainnet date would be decided later. ETH Daily reported December 2, 2026 as the earliest date developers are considering, pending confirmation after the Hoodi testnet fork on October 26.
Is Glamsterdam live?
On Sepolia, yes, since October 6, 2026 at 13:53 UTC. On Hoodi it activates on October 26, 2026 at 17:42 UTC. On Ethereum mainnet it is not live and has no date.
What is the gas limit after Glamsterdam?
Hoodi raises it from 60 million to 200 million at the fork epoch. For mainnet, 200 million is the target core developers agreed on; the actual limit is set by validators, so it depends on client defaults and validator configuration when the fork happens.
Will gas fees go down after Glamsterdam?
During congestion, most likely, because each block can take more than three times the work before the base fee rises. In quiet periods fees are already near the floor, so the day-to-day cost will look similar. Simple transfers also use fewer gas units under EIP-2780, while contract deployments pay more.
What is ePBS?
Enshrined proposer-builder separation, EIP-7732. Today most blocks are assembled by specialised builders and handed to the proposing validator through third-party relays. ePBS writes that handoff into the protocol: the validator commits to a builder's bid in-protocol and the payload arrives later in the slot, which also widens the time available to propagate a block from about 2 seconds to about 9.
What are block-level access lists?
EIP-7928. Each block carries a list of every address and storage slot its transactions read or write, with the resulting values. Clients can then fetch state and run independent transactions in parallel instead of in order, which is what lets a 200M gas block be verified in about the time a 60M block takes today.
Do I need to update my wallet or move my ETH?
No. Wallets, addresses and balances are unchanged. Only node operators and validators need to update software, and only before the fork on the network they run. Any message asking you to swap, migrate or upgrade your ETH is a scam.
What is the Hoodi testnet?
Hoodi is the public testnet client teams use as the final rehearsal before mainnet, the role Holesky used to play. Glamsterdam forks there on October 26, 2026 at 17:42:48 UTC, epoch 132352, with the gas limit schedule set to 200 million at the same epoch.
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