Ethereum Plans Glamsterdam Upgrade to Advance Its Scaling Roadmap

Ethereum is preparing its next major network upgrade, known as Glamsterdam. According to Ethereum's official roadmap, the upgrade is planned for the second half of 2026, though the project describes this as a target rather than a fixed date that depends on testing going smoothly. Glamsterdam is positioned as a step in Ethereum's longer-term effort to handle more activity without sacrificing decentralization.

A network upgrade, sometimes called a hard fork, is a coordinated change to the rules that every computer running the Ethereum software follows. Because no single company controls Ethereum, these changes are debated openly, tested on practice networks, and then activated together at an agreed point. Glamsterdam follows earlier 2025 upgrades and continues a steady cadence of improvements rather than a single dramatic overhaul.

The name itself reflects how Ethereum is built in two coordinated layers. Glamsterdam combines "Gloas," the name for the changes to the consensus layer that secures the network, with "Amsterdam," the name for changes to the execution layer that processes transactions and smart contracts.

What the upgrade focuses on

Ethereum's roadmap lists two headline proposals, each written up as an Ethereum Improvement Proposal, or EIP, the formal documents used to specify changes.

The first is EIP-7732, often called enshrined proposer-builder separation. In simple terms, it splits the work of agreeing on a block from the heavier work of fully checking the transactions inside it. Today validators must complete both within the roughly four-second window before their attestations are due. By deferring the execution check, EIP-7732 gives validators more time to verify a block's contents — on the order of six seconds for the next block's proposer and about nine seconds for other validators — which gives the network more breathing room to handle larger amounts of data safely. Both EIP-7732 and the second proposal are currently listed as Draft status.

The second is EIP-7928, or block-level access lists. This proposal asks each block to declare in advance which accounts and data it will touch. According to the EIP, that advance map lets nodes read data and process transactions in parallel where their accessed data does not overlap, rather than strictly one after another.

Why scaling matters to users

Scaling refers to a network's ability to process more transactions, often measured in transactions per second, or throughput. When demand outpaces capacity, fees, paid in a unit called gas, tend to rise. Greater capacity can mean lower and more predictable costs.

Much of Ethereum's everyday activity already runs on layer-2 networks, separate chains that bundle transactions and settle them back to Ethereum. The Glamsterdam changes are aimed largely at giving those layer-2 systems more room to operate.

Importantly, Ethereum's official roadmap does not publish specific throughput or block gas limit figures for Glamsterdam. It frames the work as infrastructure that enables future capacity increases rather than guaranteeing a particular speed at launch. Higher numbers circulated elsewhere should be treated as goals or estimates, not confirmed results.

As with any upgrade, timing and final scope may shift as testing continues.

Sources

• Glamsterdam — ethereum.org roadmap
• EIP-7732: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation
• EIP-7928: Block-Level Access Lists