Ethereum’s next major protocol upgrade, Glamsterdam, aims to increase Layer-1 capacity and improve how blocks are built, propagated and processed. Mainnet deployment is expected in Q4 2026, with Sepolia testing scheduled for October 6. The upgrade focuses on improving transaction processing and network scalability. It also introduces infrastructure designed to support greater parallel execution. 

Ethereum upgrades combine names from the execution and consensus layers. ‘Glamsterdam’ combines Amsterdam, the execution-layer upgrade named after a previous Devcon location, with Gloas, the consensus-layer upgrade named after a star.

The upgrade follows Fusaka, activated in December 2025, and focuses on Ethereum’s ‘Scale L1' and ‘Scale Blobs’ objectives. Ethereum’s roadmap says Glamsterdam is intended to improve parallelization, expand capacity and control long-term database growth.

A headline change is EIP-7732, or Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation. Ethereum currently relies partly on external infrastructure to coordinate block proposers and builders.

Glamsterdam would move this separation into the protocol itself. According to Ethereum.org, ePBS could expand the effective execution-payload propagation window from roughly two seconds to nine seconds. More propagation time could allow larger amounts of data to move safely through the network while reducing dependence on third-party middleware. 

EIP-7928 introduces Block-Level Access Lists, or BALs. These map which parts of Ethereum’s state transactions access and modify.

Mapping these dependencies in advance can support parallel disk reads, faster synchronization and eventually greater parallel transaction processing. The Ethereum Foundation’s 2026 protocol priorities say BALs support efforts to raise Ethereum’s gas limit toward and beyond 100 million.

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