Java development company: the September 2026 licensing cliff and how to choose a partner

Summary. Two things happen to Java estates in September 2026. Oracle's support roadmap, updated 4 August 2026, ends Premier Support for Java 17 that month, and JDK 21 updates released after September 2026 move from the free No-Fee Terms and Conditions licence to the Oracle Technology Network licence. Oracle's published Java SE Universal Subscription price list, dated 1 March 2023, starts at $15.00 per employee per month for 1 to 999 employees and falls to $5.25 at 40,000 to 49,999. The metric counts every full-time, part-time and temporary employee plus agents, contractors and consultants, not Java users; Oracle's own worked example is 28,000 employees at $6.75, or $2,268,000 a year. Meanwhile Spring Boot 3.5.x left open-source support on 30 June 2026, so only 4.0.x and 4.1.x remain in OSS support. A Java development company worth hiring should open with those dates, not with a technology stack slide.

The support dates that decide your architecture

Release	GA	Oracle Premier ends	Oracle Extended ends	Temurin availability	Corretto EOL
Java 8	March 2014	March 2022	December 2030	at least Dec 2030	December 2030
Java 11	September 2018	September 2023	January 2032	at least Oct 2027	January 2032
Java 17	September 2021	September 2026	September 2029	at least Oct 2027	October 2029
Java 21	September 2023	September 2028	September 2031	at least Dec 2029	October 2030
Java 25	September 2025	September 2030	September 2033	at least Sep 2031	October 2032

Java 25 is the current LTS as of August 2026. The next LTS is Java 29 in September 2027, on the two-year cadence. Java 26, a non-LTS release, went GA in March 2026 and its Premier support ends in September 2026.

The licensing detail matters more than the support dates for most buyers. Oracle waives the Extended Support fee for Java 17 from October 2026 to September 2029, waives the uplift for Java 11 from October 2023 to January 2032, and for Java 8 from March 2022 to December 2030. Those waivers apply to subscribers. They do not make Oracle JDK free.

The distribution decision is the licensing decision

Because the OpenJDK source is shared, the practical question is not "which Java version" but "whose build". The answers diverge sharply on cost.

Distribution	Cost	Paid SLA	Java 17 end	Java 21 end
Oracle JDK	Universal Subscription, from $15/employee/month	Yes, Oracle	Premier Sept 2026, Extended Sept 2029	Premier Sept 2028
Eclipse Temurin	Free	No, third-party only	at least October 2027	at least December 2029
Amazon Corretto	Free, GPLv2 with Classpath Exception	Via AWS support	October 2029	October 2030
Red Hat OpenJDK on RHEL	Included with RHEL	Yes, Red Hat	Full support Dec 2027, ELS-1 Jan 2029	Full support Dec 2029, ELS-1 Sept 2031
Azul	Commercial	Yes, Azul	Production Support plus 2 years Extended for LTS	Same policy

Eclipse supports each LTS "for at least four years" and provides no paid SLA of its own; commercial support for Temurin comes from third parties. Latest Temurin builds as of July 2026 include 25.0.4+7, 21.0.12+8 and 17.0.20+8. Corretto is free under GPLv2 with the Classpath Exception; note that JavaFX support in Corretto 8 stopped on 31 March 2026. Red Hat's OpenJDK lifecycle page, updated 13 August 2026, gives Java 11 an End of Full Support that already passed on 31 October 2024 with ELS-1 to 31 January 2032.

A partner who standardises your estate on Oracle JDK without telling you the per-employee metric counts contractors has cost you money. That is the single most expensive avoidable mistake in Java platform work.

Spring is the tighter constraint than the JDK

Spring's own support policy gives each Spring Boot minor release 13 months of open-source support, commercial support adds 12 months, and only the last minor of a major generation gets an extra five years of enterprise support. From Spring's project API:

Spring Boot	OSS support ends	Commercial support ends
3.3.x	30 June 2025	30 June 2026
3.4.x	31 December 2025	31 December 2026
3.5.x	30 June 2026	30 June 2032
4.0.x	31 December 2026	31 December 2027
4.1.x	31 July 2027	31 July 2028

Only 4.0.x and 4.1.x are in open-source support as of August 2026, with 4.1.0 the current version. Spring Framework 6.2.x left OSS support on 30 June 2026 with commercial cover to 30 June 2032; 7.0.x runs to 31 July 2027.

Note what 3.5.x buys: as the last 3.x minor it carries commercial support to 30 June 2032, six years out. For an estate that cannot absorb a Spring 4 migration this year, paying for 3.5.x commercial support is a defensible plan with a real end date, not a stall. That is a conversation a good partner initiates.

Jakarta EE and the namespace question

Jakarta EE 11 Platform went GA on 26 June 2025, requiring Java 17 or later, with virtual-thread support on 21 and above and the new Jakarta Data 1.0 specification. Removed or deprecated in 11: Managed Beans, all SecurityManager references following JEP 411, Jakarta SOAP with Attachments, Jakarta XML Binding, and the CORBA interoperability requirement. Jakarta EE 12 is targeted for 2026 and raises the API source level to Java SE 21 with Java SE 25 at runtime.

The javax.* to jakarta.* namespace change is the migration that catches teams out, because it touches every import in a Java EE codebase and every third-party library that has not been rebuilt. Jakarta EE 9 was described by the project as the platform for testing migration to the new namespace. If your application server predates that, budget the namespace change as its own phase.

What to ask a Java development company

1. Which JDK distribution do you propose, and what is the licence? If the answer is "Oracle JDK" without a costed subscription line, the quote is incomplete.
2. What is our Spring Boot minor version and when does its OSS support end? For most estates in August 2026 the honest answer is "already ended".
3. Do we have javax.* imports? A single grep decides whether this is an upgrade or a migration.
4. What is the plan for Java 17 after September 2026? Extended Support with the fee waived, a move to Temurin or Corretto, or a jump to Java 25.
5. Who provides the SLA? Free distributions have no vendor SLA. That is fine if you accept it deliberately and not fine if you assume otherwise.
6. What breaks under virtual threads? Synchronised blocks around blocking I/O and thread-local-heavy frameworks behave differently, and it is cheaper to know before the migration than during the incident.

Our five-step delivery process

1. Estate audit, 1 week. JDK distribution and version per service, Spring Boot and Spring Framework versions, javax.* import count, and a licence exposure figure using Oracle's published employee metric.
2. Target selection, 1 week. Distribution and version decision with the cost model attached, plus the Spring 3.5.x commercial-support option costed as an explicit alternative to migrating now.
3. Dependency and namespace work, 2 to 8 weeks. Third-party library rebuilds, namespace changes, removed-API replacements. Sized by import count and by how many dependencies have no Jakarta-namespace release.
4. Runtime and container work, 1 to 3 weeks. Base images, JVM flags, container-aware memory settings, and virtual-thread readiness where it applies.
5. Cutover and handover, 1 week. Parallel run, rollback plan, and documentation your team owns.

Engagements run as fixed-scope phases with a named senior engineer per phase. Phase one is deliberately short and produces a written licence-exposure number, because that number frequently changes the decision.

The talent context, and why it matters for a long-lived system

Java was used by 29.4% of all respondents and 29.6% of professional developers in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, which drew 49,009 responses from 177 countries between 29 May and 23 June 2025, with 31,771 answering the languages question. Comparators in the same survey: JavaScript 66%, Python 57.9%, C# 27.8%. Among those learning to code, Java sits at 40.8%.

On the delivery side, NASSCOM's Strategic Review published 24 February 2025 put India's tech industry revenue at $282.6 billion for FY2025 including hardware, up 5.1%, with IT services at $137.1 billion and total headcount of 5.8 million after 126,000 net hires. There were more than 1,750 global capability centres in India in 2024. FY2026 was projected to cross $300 billion; we have found no reachable primary source for FY2026 actuals, so treat any figure above $300 billion as unverified.

Read those two together and the staffing picture for a fifteen-year Java system is comfortable in a way that the same picture for classic ASP.NET or AngularJS is not. That is a genuine argument for keeping a Java monolith rather than rewriting it.

India-specific considerations

For teams building in India, the Oracle employee metric is the figure to model first, because it counts headcount rather than Java usage and Indian services organisations tend to have large contractor populations that fall inside the definition. A 3,000-person organisation at the $10.50 tier is $378,000 a year on list before any negotiation, whether three services run on Java or three hundred.

Where the application handles personal data on Indian data principals, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and the DPDP Rules 2025 set the obligations, and we design applications aligned with those requirements. If you are weighing an in-house team against a delivery partner, our comparison of the GCC and product-partner models for India builds covers the trade-off, and the India versus US development cost breakdown covers the rate side.

Where Java modernisation usually goes wrong

The rewrite that was not needed. A Java 8 monolith on Temurin with a working test suite and a stable domain is not an emergency; Temurin availability for Java 8 runs to at least December 2030 and Corretto 8 to December 2030. Moving it to Java 25 and Spring Boot 4 is a project. Splitting it into microservices is a different, much larger project, and the two get quoted together far more often than they should. Our guides on monolith to microservices modernisation and platform engineering modernisation patterns set out when the split earns its cost and when it does not.

The version upgrade is usually the cheap part. The dependency graph is the expensive part.

FAQ

What happens to Java 17 in September 2026?

Oracle Premier Support for Java 17 ends in September 2026, per Oracle's support roadmap updated 4 August 2026. Extended Support runs to September 2029, with the Extended Support fee waived from October 2026 to September 2029. Eclipse Temurin lists Java 17 availability to at least October 2027 and Amazon Corretto to October 2029.

How much does Oracle Java cost?

Oracle's published Java SE Universal Subscription price list, dated 1 March 2023, runs from $15.00 per employee per month for 1 to 999 employees down to $5.25 for 40,000 to 49,999, with 50,000 and above quoted on request. The metric counts all employees plus agents, contractors and consultants, not Java users.

Can we avoid the Oracle subscription entirely?

Yes. Eclipse Temurin and Amazon Corretto are free builds of OpenJDK, and Red Hat OpenJDK is included with a RHEL subscription. The trade-off is the service level: Eclipse provides no paid SLA of its own, so commercial support for Temurin comes from third parties. Choose that deliberately rather than by default.

Which Spring Boot versions are still supported?

Only 4.0.x and 4.1.x are in open-source support as of August 2026, with 4.1.0 current. Spring Boot 3.5.x left OSS support on 30 June 2026 but, as the last 3.x minor, carries commercial support to 30 June 2032. Spring Framework 6.2.x left OSS support on the same date.

What is the javax to jakarta namespace change?

Jakarta EE moved the Java EE package namespace from javax.* to jakarta.*, and Jakarta EE 9 was the release for testing that migration. It touches every affected import and every third-party library that has not been rebuilt against the new namespace, which makes it a distinct migration phase rather than part of a version upgrade.

What is the current Java LTS?

Java 25, released in September 2025, with Oracle Premier Support to September 2030 and Extended Support to September 2033. The next LTS is Java 29 in September 2027, on Oracle's two-year LTS cadence. Java 26 is a non-LTS release from March 2026 whose Premier support ends in September 2026.

Is Jakarta EE 11 a big change?

It requires Java 17 or later and adds Jakarta Data 1.0, with virtual-thread support on Java 21 and above. It also removes or deprecates Managed Beans, all SecurityManager references following JEP 411, Jakarta SOAP with Attachments, Jakarta XML Binding, and the CORBA interoperability requirement. Jakarta EE 11 Platform went GA on 26 June 2025.

Should we rewrite our Java 8 monolith?

Not automatically. Temurin lists Java 8 availability to at least December 2030 and Corretto 8 to December 2030, so a stable monolith with a working test suite is not an emergency. Model the licence exposure and the dependency graph first; the version upgrade is usually cheaper than the rewrite by a wide margin.

How eCorpIT can help

eCorpIT builds and modernises Java systems for teams in India, the UK and the US. Founded in 2021 and based in Gurugram, we are CMMI Level 5 appraised, MSME certified and ISO 27001:2022 certified, and work with senior engineering teams rather than staffing juniors behind a senior name. Phase one is a one-week estate audit that produces a licence-exposure figure and a per-service verdict, and it frequently ends with a recommendation to change distribution rather than to rewrite anything. See how we scope application modernisation and framework upgrades, then talk to us with your dependency manifest.

References

1. Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap — Oracle, updated 4 August 2026.
2. Oracle Java SE Subscription Global Price List — Oracle, price list dated 1 March 2023.
3. Adoptium support — Eclipse Adoptium, Temurin LTS availability dates.
4. Amazon Corretto FAQs — AWS, Corretto end-of-life dates.
5. Red Hat build of OpenJDK life cycle — Red Hat, page updated 13 August 2026.
6. Azul support roadmap — Azul; the version table renders client-side.
7. Spring support policy — Broadcom, OSS and commercial support windows.
8. Spring Boot generations API — Broadcom, per-minor support end dates.
9. Spring Boot project page — Broadcom, current version.
10. Jakarta EE 11 released — Eclipse Foundation, GA 26 June 2025.
11. Jakarta EE 9 release — Eclipse Foundation, namespace migration.
12. 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey: technology — Stack Overflow.
13. 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey: methodology — Stack Overflow, 49,009 responses from 177 countries.
14. NASSCOM Strategic Review press release — NASSCOM, 24 February 2025.

Last updated: 17 August 2026.