Ethereum developers have scheduled the Glamsterdam network upgrade for October 26, 2026, on the Hoodi testnet, marking another milestone in the blockchain’s efforts to increase transaction-processing capacity and improve block production.
According to an October 16 announcement from the Ethereum Foundation, the upgrade will activate at 17:42:48 UTC, corresponding to epoch 132,352 and slot 4,235,264.
Hoodi’s block gas limit will simultaneously increase to 200 million, matching the configuration introduced on the Sepolia testnet earlier this month. The upgrade follows Glamsterdam’s successful Sepolia activation on October 6, allowing developers to assess protocol changes across multiple testing environments before deploying them on Ethereum’s main network.
The Ethereum Foundation emphasized that a mainnet activation date has not yet been determined. The latest schedule therefore represents progress in testing rather than confirmation of when Ethereum users will receive the proposed scaling improvements.
Hoodi Test Targets Higher Capacity and New Block Production Rules
Glamsterdam introduces several protocol changes designed to improve Ethereum‘s execution efficiency, block construction and long-term scalability. A central component is enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, which incorporates the division between block proposers and builders directly into Ethereum’s consensus protocol.
Currently, block construction frequently relies on external infrastructure that coordinates transactions and block proposals. By formalizing the separation at the protocol level, developers aim to reduce reliance on external arrangements and improve transparency around block production.
Another significant change involves block-level access lists, which provide information about the accounts and storage locations transactions are expected to access. These lists could support more efficient transaction processing and future parallel execution improvements.
Glamsterdam also introduces revised gas pricing intended to reflect execution costs and the burden that transactions place on Ethereum’s state. The planned 200-million-gas limit represents more than three times the approximately 60-million-gas baseline used before Sepolia’s upgrade.
However, a higher gas limit does not automatically translate into a proportional increase in real-world throughput. Actual capacity depends on transaction complexity, network conditions, gas accounting and the ability of participating nodes to process larger blocks reliably.
Mainnet Timing Depends on Testing and Client Readiness
The October 26 activation will provide another opportunity to evaluate Glamsterdam’s performance under conditions relevant to validators, staking providers and infrastructure operators.
Ethereum’s October 19 All Core Developers Testing meeting reaffirmed the Hoodi schedule and the associated 200-million-gas target. Developers are also examining performance benchmarks, client compatibility and remaining implementation issues through dedicated development networks and mainnet shadow forks.
Node operators participating in Hoodi must update both execution-layer and consensus-layer software before the scheduled activation. Operators using outdated clients risk becoming incompatible with the upgraded testnet.
The Ethereum Foundation‘s bug bounty program also covers Glamsterdam specifications, with eligible client implementations included as supported releases become available. Earlier Sepolia testing demonstrated that blocks could operate with substantially larger gas allowances, although observed utilization remained below the maximum capacity.
Those results provide useful performance evidence but do not guarantee identical outcomes on mainnet. Ethereum’s broader scaling strategy combines improvements to its base layer with continued development of layer-2 networks. Increasing execution capacity could support greater activity directly on Ethereum, while more efficient block construction may improve infrastructure performance.
Nevertheless, higher processing limits can also increase hardware and bandwidth requirements, creating trade-offs for network decentralization. The next milestone is Hoodi’s scheduled activation on October 26.
Only after developers evaluate the results and confirm client readiness will they determine the timetable for deploying Glamsterdam on Ethereum mainnet.