Main Announcements of the Java Conference: What Was Shown to Developers in 2025

Java Conference 2025: Key Announcements That Will Change Development

This year, the annual JavaOne conference and parallel events gathered thousands of developers from around the world. The main focus is on performance, simplifying multithreading, and the evolution of the ecosystem. We have highlighted the most significant announcements that every Java developer should know.

1. Project Valhalla: value types finally in Preview

The long-awaited Project Valhalla has moved to the second Preview stage in JDK 24. Developers now have the ability to use inline class — lightweight types without the overhead of objects. This will speed up work with large data arrays and reduce the load on the garbage collector.

• Value types — work like primitives, but with methods and type safety.
• Null-restricted types — the compiler now guarantees the absence of null values.
• Stabilization is expected in JDK 25.

2. Loom 2.0: virtual threads become smarter

Project Loom has received a major update. Virtual threads now support structured concurrency out of the box. This means code with thousands of threads is as simple to write as synchronous code.

• New API StructuredTaskScope for managing the task lifecycle.
• Improved integration with JDBC and HTTP clients.
• 40% reduction in overhead compared to Loom 1.0.

3. Spring Framework 7: reactivity and AI agents

At the conference, Pivotal presented Spring Framework 7, which will be released at the end of the year. Main features:

• AI integration — built-in support for LLMs (via Spring AI) with auto-configuration.
• Virtual Threads by default — now all web requests are processed on virtual threads.
• Improved work with GraalVM Native Image — building native code without additional configuration.

4. New tool: Leyden Runtime

Project Leyden announced an experimental runtime for accelerating application startup. In a demo, a Spring Boot application started in 0.8 seconds compared to 4 seconds on a standard JDK. This is especially important for serverless and microservices.

5. Java in the cloud: Amazon Corretto and GraalVM

Amazon introduced Corretto 24 with optimizations for AWS Lambda and ECS. And Oracle released GraalVM for JDK 24 with support for a new AOT compilation format. Now native images can be created directly from Maven/Gradle plugins without tricks.

Summary: what to put into practice?

The conference showed: Java is confidently moving towards high performance and simplicity. We recommend right now:

• Test JDK 24 Early Access with Virtual Threads and Valhalla.
• Update Spring Boot to 4.0 (if you use it) — it will be compatible with the new features.
• Study Structured Concurrency — it will change the approach to asynchronous code.

Follow the updates on our website — we will continue to break down the details of these announcements.