Lifecycle guide for Java from Oracle

All releases, patches, maintenance and support periods at a glance

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📅 Last update on 2026-04-14

What is Java?

Automate product release and end-of-life management

Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers write once, run anywhere (WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture.

The entire lifecycle of Java

The following figure shows you the visualised product life cycle of Java. You can see all releases with the latest patch version, the long-term support characteristics (orange flag in the green circle, the periods for version provision, maintenance and support.