Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade reaches final devnet stage, targets 200M gas limit by H2 2026

Ethereum’s next major protocol upgrade has entered its final development stage, bringing one of the network’s largest post Merge overhauls closer to public testnets.

Glamsterdam, the follow up to Fusaka, is planned for the second half of 2026. Developers are now running devnets with the planned EIP set active before moving the upgrade through public testnets and toward a mainnet fork.

The upgrade is built around two headline changes. EIP 7732 introduces enshrined proposer builder separation, known as ePBS, while EIP 7928 adds block level access lists.

EIP 7732 moves part of Ethereum’s proposer builder structure directly into the protocol. Today, validators rely heavily on external builder infrastructure and relays for block construction. 

Enshrining that separation is designed to reduce reliance on off protocol systems and make block production more transparent at the consensus layer.

EIP-7928 focuses on execution. Block level access lists let the network record which accounts and storage locations a block will touch, creating a clearer map of state access during execution.

That matters because Ethereum still processes many state interactions sequentially. Better information about state access can support parallel reads, faster validation, and more efficient execution, especially as developers push toward higher gas limits.

The upgrade is also tied to Ethereum’s broader gas limit roadmap. Developers have been testing higher gas limits, with the long term goal of safely expanding Layer 1 capacity without creating new risks around state growth and node requirements.

Glamsterdam does not make higher throughput automatic. The gains will depend on client performance, validator hardware, gas repricing, and how much parallelism real blocks can actually support.

The upgrade also changes the MEV pipeline. By moving proposer builder separation closer to the protocol, Ethereum is trying to reduce reliance on external relay markets while preserving the efficiency that specialized builders bring to block construction.

The next step is public testnet deployment. That phase will show whether the devnet work holds across Ethereum’s client ecosystem and whether the upgrade can move toward mainnet without delaying or narrowing the EIP set.

Glamsterdam is less about one isolated feature than a broader restructuring of Ethereum’s base layer. It targets the two places where Ethereum still faces pressure: how blocks are built and how transactions are executed.