New Kotlin Standard: What Awaits Developers in 2025

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New Kotlin Standard: What Awaits Developers

JetBrains has officially presented the roadmap for the Kotlin language for 2025–2026. Key changes will affect the compiler, multiplatform development, and build tools. Developers should prepare for the transition to the stable version of K2, a new package manager, and improved multithreading support. Let's break down the main innovations.

What's New and Why Is It Important?

The main goal of the updates is to make Kotlin faster, safer, and more convenient for large projects. The main directions are:

Stabilization of the K2 compiler — a new compiler architecture that speeds up builds by 2–3 times and improves type inference. Already available in Kotlin 2.1, it will become the only mode in Kotlin 2.2.
Multiplatform (KMP) — Kotlin Multiplatform gains the status of a stable solution for Android, iOS, Web, and Desktop. This means business logic can be written once, while UI is handled separately for each platform.
New package manager (KMPP) — a lighter and faster tool optimized for Kotlin is proposed instead of Gradle for multiplatform projects.
Smart primitives (Value Classes) — wrapper types that do not create objects at runtime. They allow writing type-safe code without sacrificing performance.
Improved memory management — a new garbage collector for Kotlin/Native reduces latency and simplifies integration with C libraries.

How Will This Affect Development?

For Android developers, switching to K2 means faster compilation and fewer bugs during refactoring. For teams using Kotlin Multiplatform, the main advantage is leaving the experimental status behind: now KMP can be confidently deployed to production.

Value Classes will help avoid typing errors (for example, confusing user IDs with numeric codes), and the new package manager will simplify dependency configuration. JetBrains also announced improved integration with Compose Multiplatform, making it even easier to write shared UI for Android and Desktop.

Tips for Developers

Update your projects to Kotlin 2.1 and enable the K2 compiler in Gradle settings.
Start learning Kotlin Multiplatform on small modules.
Test Value Classes in new projects — this will reduce the risk of errors.
Follow the news about the stable release of Kotlin 2.2 (expected at the end of 2025).

The new Kotlin standard makes the language even more competitive in the world of Android, backend, and multiplatform development. If you haven't switched to Kotlin yet, now is the best time to start.