Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade activating across the Sepolia test network

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam Upgrade Goes Live on Sepolia

By Isaac • October 6, 2026 11:10 am • Comments

Ethereum’s next major upgrade has moved from planning into a live public test.

Glamsterdam activated on the Sepolia testnet Tuesday, giving Ethereum client teams, node operators and application developers their first broad public proving ground for a package aimed at changing how blocks are built and how the network handles state.

Sepolia is where the code begins facing conditions much closer to the real world. Glamsterdam has now crossed from design work into coordinated network testing.

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This activation does not put Glamsterdam on mainnet, and ordinary ETH holders have no action to take.

In its testnet announcement, the Ethereum Foundation scheduled activation for epoch 353,024 and slot 11,296,768 at 13:53:36 UTC on October 6. The foundation said node operators had to update both their execution-layer and consensus-layer clients before the fork.

Glamsterdam combines the Amsterdam execution-layer upgrade with the Gloas consensus-layer upgrade. Two of its headline changes are enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, and block-level access lists.

ePBS moves the relationship between block proposers and specialized builders deeper into Ethereum’s protocol. Block-level access lists identify which accounts and storage locations a block touches, giving clients more information they can use to process work efficiently.

The package also changes gas accounting so prices better reflect the cost of execution and state growth.

Ethereum educator Pooja Ranjan marked the activation and noted the size of the package now being tested publicly.

Sepolia is a public test network, so a clean activation would give developers confidence without putting mainnet funds at risk. Problems can still surface as client teams study block production, validator behavior and application compatibility under the new rules.

The Ethereum Foundation has not announced activation dates for Hoodi or mainnet. Its guidance says a separate announcement will cover mainnet, and it specifically tells ETH holders that no action is required for this Sepolia step.

Cointelegraph likewise described Sepolia as the next checkpoint before any later mainnet activation.

The report noted that Glamsterdam reached Sepolia with 18 core EIPs and seven additional proposals in the test package. It also emphasized that Hoodi and mainnet dates remain unset while developers evaluate the public test.

That sequencing gives client teams time to study the fork under shared conditions before asking validators and infrastructure providers to prepare for a production deployment.

Glamsterdam follows Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade and focuses on base-layer scaling. Its proposer-builder changes move a role now handled through outside middleware into the protocol, while block-level access lists expose the state each block touches so clients can prepare work more efficiently.

The launch also gives application teams a chance to test contracts that rely on fixed gas assumptions. A successful fork is therefore more than a client milestone: it is the point where infrastructure providers can begin measuring how the new rules affect real development workflows.

Ethereum’s scaling strategy has long leaned on rollups, but the base layer still has to become more efficient as activity grows. Glamsterdam is designed to improve that foundation: block construction, validation and access to state are all areas where better coordination can translate into more capacity and fewer bottlenecks.

The Sepolia run will now produce the evidence that counts. Developers will be watching whether clients stay in sync, whether block production behaves as expected and whether applications built around older gas assumptions need changes.

If the test remains stable, attention will turn to the next deployment decision. Until then, the honest takeaway is straightforward: Glamsterdam is live in public testing, Ethereum’s upgrade pipeline is moving, and mainnet still has another gate to clear.

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