After Java 9, oracle intends to release new versions of java every 6 months. After the latest version : Java 17, there will be an LTS (Long term support) release every 2 years. So the next LTS release Java 21 will be on September 2023. Java SE 1-5, 6, 7, 8, 11 and 17 are LTS releases. Below table provides all the major java versions, release dates and End of Support Life (The length of time updates are provided).
| Release | General Availability / Release Date | End of Support Life (EOSL) |
|---|---|---|
| JDK 1.0 | January 1996 | |
| JDK 1.1 | February 1997 | October 2002 |
| Java2 SE 1.2(LTS) | December 1998 | December 2003 |
| Java2 SE 1.3 (LTS) | May 2000 | April 2011 |
| Java2 SE 1.4 (LTS) | February 2002 | March 2013 |
| Java2 SE 5 (LTS) | September 2004 | July 2015 |
| Java SE 6 (LTS) | December 2006 | December 2018 |
| Java SE 7 (LTS) | July 2011 | July 2022 |
| Java SE 8 (LTS) | March 2014 | December 2030 |
| Java SE 9 (non-LTS) | September 2017 | March 2018 |
| Java SE 10 (non-LTS) | March 2018 | September 2018 |
| Java SE 11 (LTS) | September 2018 | September 2026 |
| Java SE 12 (non-LTS) | March 2019 | September 2019 |
| Java SE 13 (non-LTS) | September 2019 | March 2020 |
| Java SE 14 (non-LTS) | March 2020 | September 2020 |
| Java SE 15 (non-LTS) | September 2020 | March 2021 |
| Java SE 16 (non-LTS) | March 2021 | September 2021 |
| Java SE 17 (LTS) | September 2021 | September 2029 |
| Java SE 18 (non-LTS) | March 2022 | September 2022 |
| Java SE 19 (non-LTS) | September 2022 | March 2023 |
| Java SE 20 (non-LTS) | March 2023 | September 2023 |
| Java SE 21 (LTS) | September 2023 | September 2031 |
There are a lot of modern language features introduced between Java 11 and Java 17. Projects which are still on Java 8 can migrate directly to the Java 17 LTS release instead of moving to Java 11 LTS to benefit from all the latest features of Java 17.
When was Java 5 released ?
Java 5 was released on 2004-Sep-30 with lot of great new features. Starting from Java 5 the major version got dropped. So the next version of Java 1.4 became 5. Some of the new features of Java 5 include:
- Generics
- Enhanced for Loop
- Autoboxing/Unboxing
- Typesafe Enums
- Varargs
- Static import
- Annotations
- Concurrency Utilities (java.util.concurrent)
- Monitoring and Management APIs.
For more details refer Java 5 new features