Ethereum 2026 Upgrades: Glamsterdam and Hegotá Explained

Ethereum has been busy. If your last mental model of ETH was formed around 2022, when gas fees could cost more than your actual transaction, you are genuinely working with outdated information.

Three major protocol upgrades, Dencun in March 2024, Pectra in May 2025, and Fusaka in December 2025, already changed how the network behaves at a fundamental level. And 2026 brings two more: Glamsterdam and Hegotá. Together, they represent the most ambitious structural changes Ethereum has attempted since The Merge.

Here is what is actually happening, without the hype.

Why Ethereum Keeps Upgrading

Ethereum does not upgrade because developers get bored. It upgrades because the blockchain space is competitive and the demands on the network keep growing.

The Ethereum Foundation adopted a biannual release schedule, meaning two major hard forks per year instead of one large bundle every 12 to 18 months. Smaller, more targeted updates ship faster, break less, and let developers plan around predictable timelines.

That shift came after real criticism from builders who argued protocol development was falling behind the network’s own growth. Credit where it is due: the Ethereum team listened.

As of May 2026, standard gas sits around 0.15 gwei on most days, with daily averages near 0.5 gwei through April. A basic ETH transfer costs under a cent. The old narrative of “Ethereum is too expensive for most apps” is stale. The network has genuinely changed.

Glamsterdam: The Big One for Layer 1

Glamsterdam is Ethereum’s first major upgrade scheduled for 2026, targeting the first half of the year. It focuses on scaling Layer 1 directly, and that is a deliberate change in strategy.

For years, Ethereum leaned on Layer 2 rollups like Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism to absorb user activity. The ecosystem now processes over 105 million daily transactions across its L2 landscape, while Ethereum mainnet itself handles just over 2 million per day. The rollup-centric approach worked, but it created fragmentation: liquidity and users scattered across dozens of chains.

Glamsterdam says Ethereum is no longer scaling only around the base layer. It is scaling the base layer itself.

Parallel Execution

The headline change is parallel transaction processing. Right now, Ethereum processes transactions one at a time, sequentially. Glamsterdam introduces the ability to run multiple non-conflicting transactions simultaneously across different CPU cores.

Think of it as moving from a single-lane road to a multi-lane motorway. The road did not get longer; it just got wider.

This alone could bring Ethereum’s Layer 1 throughput significantly closer to 100 transactions per second, up from the current 21 TPS.

Gas Limit Expansion

Glamsterdam also targets a major gas limit increase. The network’s gas limit, which determines how much computation fits into each block, sat near 30 million for years. It rose toward 60 million in early 2025 after Fusaka. Glamsterdam aims for a floor of up to 200 million gas, more than triple the current level.

That means more transactions per block, less congestion, and lower fees even as usage grows.

Block-Level Access Lists and ePBS

Two other key Glamsterdam features are Block-level Access Lists (BALs) and enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS).

BALs map transaction dependencies at the block level rather than per transaction. This enables faster syncs, parallel disk reads, and more predictable gas costs for state-heavy applications. ePBS separates block agreement from block processing, allowing validators to safely outsource block assembly without trusting external software. It is largely an infrastructure change, but it makes the gas limit expansion safe to execute.

What Happened Before Glamsterdam

To understand why 2026 matters, it helps to know what the previous upgrades actually did.

Dencun (March 2024) introduced EIP-4844, giving rollups their own data lane through blob transactions. L2 fees dropped by 80 to 90 percent in many scenarios because rollups stopped competing with regular execution traffic.

Pectra (May 2025) raised blob throughput from 3 target/6 max blobs per block to 6 target/9 max, expanding the cheap data lane further.

Fusaka (December 2025) introduced PeerDAS, which lets validators sample blob data instead of downloading every blob in full. That sampling is what makes higher blob counts safe at the network level. It also standardized a 60 million gas limit as the new default.

Each upgrade built on the last. Glamsterdam is the next logical step.

Hegotá: The Second Upgrade of 2026

Hegotá is Ethereum’s second scheduled upgrade for 2026, targeting the second half of the year. Its name combines “Bogota,” the execution-layer component, and “Heze,” the consensus-layer component, following Ethereum’s tradition of naming forks after Devcon host cities and stars.

The headlining feature for Hegotá is Fork-choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL). This directly addresses censorship resistance. Under the current system, block proposers and builders can, in theory, filter which transactions make it into a block. FOCIL makes censorship structurally harder by enforcing transaction inclusion at the fork-choice level, rather than relying on social pressure or external oversight.

For users, that means more reliable transaction inclusion. For the network, it improves decentralization.

Verkle Trees are also under discussion for Hegotá, though not yet confirmed. If included, they would replace Ethereum’s current state structure with a more efficient cryptographic model, reducing hardware requirements for node operators and making it easier for more people to run their own nodes. More nodes means more decentralization.

What This Means for Fees and Real Users

The honest answer is: fees are already much lower than they were two years ago.

After EIP-4844, Layer 2 fees dropped dramatically. Blob transactions, which are temporary data structures created during the Dencun hard fork, cut L2 costs by as much as 90 percent in many scenarios. Glamsterdam’s expansion of blob capacity and the gas limit will push fees lower still.

For everyday users interacting with DeFi protocols or dApps, this matters. Low and predictable fees are what enable real usage, not just speculation.

If you are planning a trip and want to stretch your budget, smart cost planning makes the difference, whether you are exploring the USA on a vacation budget or managing your on-chain costs in crypto. The same logic applies: knowing what you actually owe before you transact is half the battle.

Account Abstraction Is Coming

One of the longer-term changes worth following is account abstraction. Right now, Ethereum users rely on “externally-owned accounts,” which are standard wallets tied to a private key. Lose the key, lose the funds. No exceptions.

Account abstraction moves toward programmable smart accounts. Features like social recovery, multi-signature control, and the ability to pay gas in tokens other than ETH become possible. EIP-7702 already shipped with Pectra, and EIP-8141 is being discussed for Hegotá, though it is not yet committed.

For most users, this is the change that will matter most in the long run. It removes one of the biggest usability barriers in the entire crypto space.

Security Hardening

Security is not the flashiest part of any upgrade, but it is not optional either.

The Ethereum Foundation has set a goal of achieving 128-bit provable security by the end of 2026. Ethereum researcher George Kadianakis put it plainly: for a zkEVM securing hundreds of billions of dollars, the security margin is not negotiable. If an attacker can forge a proof, they can forge anything, including minting tokens from nothing.

Proposer-builder separation, now being formally integrated via Glamsterdam’s ePBS, also reduces MEV risk and censorship exposure. Zero-knowledge proof validation at the protocol level is being developed as part of the longer-term roadmap.

The Realistic View

Ethereum’s 2026 upgrades are real and meaningful. Glamsterdam tripling the gas limit, introducing parallel execution, and formalizing ePBS is not incremental. Hegotá hardening censorship resistance and potentially shipping Verkle Trees continues that work.

What these upgrades do not guarantee is price appreciation. Ethereum’s daily active addresses and smart contract usage hit record levels in early 2026, yet ETH’s price has remained volatile. As of early 2026, around 37.5 million ETH were staked, the highest ever. Record on-chain usage and staking do not automatically move markets in the short term.

Watch what actually ships. The Ethereum roadmap is ambitious. When comparing your digital tools, whether AI assistants like in this breakdown of Perplexity AI vs Claude or blockchain protocols, performance on delivery matters more than promises on paper.

Quick Recap

Ethereum’s two major 2026 upgrades cover a clear set of goals:

Glamsterdam targets Layer 1 scalability through parallel execution, a gas limit increase toward 200 million, BALs for more efficient block processing, and ePBS for safer validator operations. Hegotá focuses on censorship resistance through FOCIL, with Verkle Trees under discussion and continued progress on account abstraction.

Both upgrades follow a biannual schedule designed to ship faster and adapt quicker. The network is not the same one that made headlines for $50 gas fees. It is considerably faster, cheaper, and more capable. Whether the market reflects that is a separate question.