Ethereum Forks in 2026: Glamsterdam and Heze-Bogota, scaling and censorship.

• Fork Glamsterdam targets parallel execution and gas in layer 1.
• ePBS and ZK change incentives and validators in Ethereum 2026
• Fork Heze-Bogota strengthens resistance to censorship and L2 integration.

The year 2026 is considered by developers and researchers as a turning point in Ethereum's scalability, with two forks on the calendar: Glamsterdam, planned for mid-year, and Heze-Bogota, expected towards the end of the cycle. The debate ranges from increasing the gas limit on Layer 1 to changes in how the network validates transactions and handles zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, as well as improvements that expand data capacity for Layer 2 (L2).

In the Glamsterdam fork, teams are working to finalize the EIP package that paves the way for a more efficient execution phase. Among the confirmed changes are Block Access Lists and the Established Separation of the Proponent Constructor, two items that seek to reduce bottlenecks and improve protocol performance without relying solely on more powerful hardware.

Block Access Lists, despite their name, are not focused on blocking transactions. Their purpose is to help the network execute multiple operations in parallel, instead of processing everything as a single queue. The feature adds a "map" to the block, showing how transactions relate to each other and which parts of the state are changed, allowing execution to be divided into simultaneous tasks. "With the Block Access List (BAL), we obtain all the state that changes from transaction to transaction and insert this information into the block," explained Gabriel Trintinalia, senior blockchain engineer at Consensys, working with the client Besu.

Ethereum will undergo key upgrades in 2026, with the Glamsterdam fork enabling parallel processing and increasing the gas limit to 200 million, up from 60 million. Validators will shift to validating ZK proofs, paving the way for Ethereum L1 to achieve 10,000 transactions per…

The Consecrated Separation of the Proposing Builder (ePBS) brings into the protocol a model already widely used via MEV Boost, separating those who assemble the block from those who propose it. Beyond the MEV and decentralization aspects, the practical benefit is allowing more time for the generation and propagation of ZK proofs, reducing penalties for slower validators. "This makes optional zkAtesting much more compatible with incentives for validators."

In Layer 1, the gas limit remains an indicator of capacity. “I believe that by 2026, I expect to see 100 million soon. Anything beyond that is probably too much speculation to be considered,” said Gary Schulte, senior blockchain protocol engineer at client Besu. Vitalik Buterin also commented on a more selective advance, stating that “we expect continued growth, but more targeted and less uniform for the coming year. For example, a possible future would be: a 5-fold increase in the gas limit, along with a 5-fold increase in the cost of gas for operations that are relatively inefficient to process.”

By the end of 2026, the Heze-Bogota fork is likely to shift the focus to censorship resistance, with EIPs like FOCIL gaining traction after debates about implementation complexity. “This is a censorship resistance mechanism that ensures that if at least part of the network is honest… then your transaction will be included at some point,” said Trintinalia. Meanwhile, the expansion of blobs and interoperability features should give L2s more breathing room as they move forward to handle transaction volumes far exceeding current standards.