Ethereum schedules Glamsterdam test on Hoodi for October 26
Tech & Launches ·
The network's next major upgrade will debut on a public testnet with a sharply higher gas ceiling and a new separation between block builders and proposers.
The Ethereum Foundation has set October 26 at 17:42 UTC as the activation time for the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Hoodi testnet, according to a foundation announcement. The rollout will push Hoodi's block gas limit to 200 million, bringing it in line with the Sepolia testnet's existing capacity.
Beyond the gas limit increase, the upgrade bundles in enshrined proposer-builder separation, a mechanism designed to formally codify the split between those who construct blocks and those who propose them. It also adds block-level access lists, which are meant to let validators process transactions within a block in parallel rather than sequentially, a change aimed at lifting throughput on Ethereum's base layer. The update further revises how gas is priced for actions like creating new state entries and reading existing data on-chain.
Testing a 200 million gas limit alongside these architectural changes signals that developers are treating capacity expansion and structural reform as linked goals rather than separate tracks. Parallel validation capability only becomes meaningful if blocks can actually carry more data, and enshrining the builder-proposer split addresses long-standing concerns about how block construction is organized at the protocol level rather than through off-chain arrangements.
The timeline and scope of the Hoodi deployment have been corroborated by coverage from WuBlockchain, which confirmed the same October 26 date, gas limit target, and feature set drawn from the foundation's own announcement.
What remains unclear is how this testnet run will translate to mainnet planning: no mainnet activation date has been specified, and there is no detail yet on how validators and infrastructure providers will be expected to adapt to the revised gas pricing for state and data operations. Observers will be watching whether Hoodi's performance under the new access-list mechanism and gas limit holds up before any broader rollout timeline is set.