ETH’s Glamsterdam upgrade has launched on the Sepolia testnet

Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade went live on the Sepolia testnet on Tuesday at 1:53 pm UTC, according to an X post from Ethereum community contributor Pooja Ranjan. The activation is one of the last major rehearsals before the upgrade's mainnet activation, and the source frames Glamsterdam as arguably one of the most consequential upgrades of 2026 for making Ethereum more scalable and efficient.

A staged rollout before the mainnet date

The Ethereum Foundation described Glamsterdam in a Sept. 28 blog post as a step to advance Ethereum's layer-1 scaling roadmap. The upgrade centers on enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and changes to gas pricing that better reflect the cost of execution.

The Sepolia launch is part of a sequence rather than a final mainnet signal. After this testnet activation, developers will determine Glamsterdam's activation date on the Hoodi testnet. Only after that stage will they set the final date for the mainnet launch. Ethereum.org also shows the Glamsterdam activation schedule.

Glamsterdam follows Fusaka as the next major upgrade. The source says it is designed to improve scalability, harden the layer-1 and make the network easier to use.

What ePBS and access lists change

Two headline changes reshape how Ethereum produces and validates blocks. The aim is to support greater throughput on the Ethereum mainnet while giving the network more room to grow.

EIP-7732 introduces separation between block proposers and builders on Ethereum's consensus protocol. It also separates consensus validation from execution validation. The source says this gives validators more time to validate execution payloads.

The current execution model is described as single-lane mode, with transactions processed in a single order. The upgrade's direction is to enable parallel processing that can support higher transactions per second and bigger block sizes without raising the gas limit.

EIP-7928 adds enforced block-level access lists. These lists record accounts and storage locations accessed during a block, along with post-transaction state changes. With that information, clients can read state from disk in parallel, validate transactions in parallel and compute state roots more efficiently.

Gas limit floor and execution pricing

Gas changes form another part of the scaling push. The Ethereum Foundation said in a May blog post that it established a 200 million gas limit floor for Glamsterdam. The source says this gives the network a major post-upgrade speed boost from its current gas limit of around 60 million.

The upgrade also aims to make gas pricing better reflect the cost of execution. Taken together with the block production changes, the stated goal is a more scalable and efficient Ethereum layer-1.

What developers will work on next

After Glamsterdam's mainnet activation, Ethereum developers will begin implementing Hegotá as the next major upgrade. The scoping work is already underway. In August, Ethereum developers started reviewing 66 proposals to narrow them down as part of scoping Hegotá, and several proposals are aimed at bringing more privacy capabilities into the protocol.

The source's related materials also point to broader ecosystem discussions. Ethereum Institutional signaled support for an Ethlabs motion to reduce Ethereum block times, while a magazine article examined why Ethereum developers want 'one-click staking' for institutions.

This report covers the testnet activation and the stated upgrade goals. It does not provide a mainnet date, a price view or investment guidance.