Ethereum prepares Glamsterdam on Hoodi with no mainnet date set

A rehearsal before the main network

Glamsterdam preparations are reaching another stage on Ethereum's test networks. In its announcement dated 16 October 2026, the Ethereum Foundation schedules activation on Hoodi for 26 October at 17:42:48 UTC. It indicates a gas limit increased to 200 million on this test network. The published timetable, however, leaves the mainnet date undetermined. The Hoodi activation therefore does not mean the same changes are already active for ordinary ether transactions.

A test network allows new rules and the software applying them to operate together, using assets intended for testing. Teams can observe block production, validation and exchanges between clients. This work seeks, in particular, to expose incompatibilities before mainnet deployment. A successful rehearsal remains technical information about the tests performed rather than a general guarantee of future operation or an indication of ether's price.

Reorganising block building and verification

Glamsterdam includes protocol-integrated separation of block proposal and building roles, known as ePBS. Proposing a block and preparing its execution content thus address distinct tasks. The objective described by the Foundation is to reduce dependence on trusted intermediaries and allow more time for certain checks. For operators, this development also means understanding the new responsibilities of software participating in network production and validation.

Another important change is block-level access lists identifying the accounts and storage locations actually used. The EIP-7928 specification also describes state changes following transactions. With this information, clients can better prepare data reads and organise some processing in parallel. Dependencies between operations must nevertheless be preserved: two transactions changing the same information cannot be treated as independent. The information contained in these lists must accurately correspond to what actually happens when the block is executed. If the two do not match, the resulting inconsistency makes the block invalid.

Software to update and performance to observe

The gas limit measures a budget of computational work permitted within a block. This computational budget cannot be interpreted as a fixed number of transactions that will always fit within a block, and it does not establish a fee that users are guaranteed to pay. A simple transfer and the execution of a complex contract do not use the same resources.

Before drawing conclusions from a higher limit, it is also necessary to consider the constraints that this creates for computation, for the propagation of information through the network and for data storage. The Glamsterdam programme therefore combines increased capacity with a revision of how certain network resources are used and charged for.

Hoodi node operators must follow compatible versions of their execution and consensus clients before the announced activation. ETH holders should not infer that they must convert their tokens to participate in the upgrade: these tests concern test-network infrastructure. The useful elements for following deployment will be the versions actually supported, results observed on Hoodi and a separate announcement of the mainnet timetable. Tests on Hoodi and deployment to the main network must continue to be distinguished, both in the dates announced and in the operations affected.