Java Development Kit (JDK) 18 will feature new characteristics due in March 2022. The new version of standard Java will have nine new features, with the feature set having been frozen as of December 9.

Specifics of the JDK 18 proposals include a service provider interface, a simple web server, a vector API, code snippets, a reimplementation of core reflection, a UTF-8 charset, a second incubator of a foreign function and memory API, a second preview of pattern matching for switch statements, and the deprecation of finalization, which was the last addition.

While JDK 17 was a long-term support (LTS) release that will receive at least eight years of support from Oracle, JDK 18 will be a short-term feature release that is supported for six months.