Apache NetBeans 32 RC1 has been released today, landing exactly on the project's feature-freeze date and tagging the build as 32-rc1. The candidate packs 196 commits across 2,246 files from 19 contributors, with standout work in Gradle 9.8.0, JDK 27 Maven fixes, a new JavaFX FXML library, and signed Git commits over SSH. It also deepens JDK 27 compatibility, moves bundled Tomcat to 11.0.26, and modernizes a chunk of security dependencies. If the Apache release vote passes cleanly, the final NetBeans 32 is slated for the November 15–30 window.

Apache NetBeans IDE 32 RC1 Ships as Open-Source IDE Enters Final Testing Phase

The free Java IDE froze its feature set on October 15 and now wants the community to shake out bugs before a November GA release.

The Apache community published the first release candidate for NetBeans IDE 32 today, and the read is unambiguous: the feature work is finished. From here it's bug fixes only, then a formal release vote, then the final GA build, which the project's schedule puts in the November 15–30 window.

That matters if you actually ship code in Java. NetBeans is one of the oldest continuously maintained IDEs still out there, and RC1 is the moment it stops adding features and starts betting nothing will fall apart.

NetBeans has been around longer than most developers give it credit for. It began in 1996 as a Czech student project called Xelfi, built with the goal of writing a Delphi-style Java IDE entirely in Java. That "first Java IDE written in Java" caught the eye of Roman Staněk, who spun a company around it before Sun Microsystems bought the whole thing in 1999. Sun open-sourced it in June 2000, which put NetBeans.org on the map as one of the earliest sponsor-backed open-source dev hubs.

It then went through a long, messy stretch, as open-source handoffs tend to. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 and installed NetBeans as the official IDE for the Java platform. Then, in a move reportedly endorsed by Java creator James Gosling, Oracle donated the source to The Apache Software Foundation in 2016. Roughly two and a half years of Incubator work later, it graduated to a top-level Apache project on April 24, 2019, with NetBeans 11.3 as its first Apache-branded release.

Geertjan Wielenga, the project's vice president at the time, made the case plainly: "Being part of the ASF means that NetBeans is now not only free and Open Source software: it is also, uniquely, and for the first time, part of a foundation specifically focused on enabling open governance."

Today the project counts more than 18 million downloads and over 800,000 participating developers. Everything ships free under the Apache License 2.0, with no paid tiers and nothing feature-gated, a stance the team still treats as non-negotiable.

NetBeans hasn't been a surprise-release project in years. Since 2019 it lands four releases per year on roughly fixed windows, from a February 15–29 slot all the way to a November 15–30 slot. A feature-freeze date starts each cycle, then weekly release candidates roll out, the Management Committee votes, and the GA drops.

The project quietly killed its LTS designations back in October 2021. No more long-term-support tiers. Just four solid yearly releases, and the next one's always coming.

NetBeans 31 shipped on August 10, bringing initial JDK 27 support, including lambda breakpoints and import-module completion. The 32 line runs about two months later and deepens that work, adding genuinely new capabilities rather than rehashing old ones. It also keeps a JDK 21 floor, which the project lowered back in NetBeans 30, while supporting newer JDKs as they land.

What's actually in RC1

The release notes break down by technology cluster, so here's the grouping that matters most.

Build tooling. Gradle bumped to 9.8.0. Maven gets stability fixes, including one that lets the effective POM editor and Maven kits actually run on JDK 27, plus the Single File Launcher now works outside Java projects. Ant can treat a whole folder of JARs as one classpath entry and run ant javadoc on JDK 25 and up.

The Java core. This is the IDE's heart, and it gets the largest slice. The debugger now hyperlinks variables and values right in the console, "Save Value to File" is fixed for large strings, and code completion handles intersection types more gracefully. Bundled Apache Tomcat is at 11.0.26 now, a notable jump from the 9.x line it was on.

New capabilities. JavaFX gets its first genuinely fresh feature this cycle, the bundled openjfx-fxml library that adds FXML support to OpenJFX projects. Git ships JGit 7.7.1 and can sign commits over SSH, a real deal for teams that actually sign their work. The code indexer moved from Lucene 9.12.3 to 10.5.1.

The boring-but-important layer. Security and dependency maintenance quietly got a refresh, with Bouncy Castle at 1.86, Mina SSH at 2.20, ASM at 9.11, and RAT at 0.18, plus updates across the Apache commons libraries, JUnit, and TestNG. Rarely headline material, but a modernized dependency tree is one of the few ways an IDE stays out of the news for the right reasons.

One you'll actually feel day to day: nested projects now render co-located and indented, with subprojects opened by default. It's a tweak you don't notice until you're drowning in a multi-module build and everything's stacked in a pile.

Try it out and what's next

Grab RC1 now from the official GitHub releases page under the 32-rc1 tag, or pull it from the mirrors on netbeans.apache.org. A release candidate is a feature-complete build sitting in bug-fix-only mode, so this is the version worth opening if you want to surface problems before the GA.

Keep in mind that a passing vote isn't a promise. The release vote should land in the November 7–15 window, and a clean vote drops the final NetBeans 32 in the November 15–30 window. A blocker can still push things back, though the timeline looks comfortable.

Eric Barboni, who's become the driving force behind NetBeans' modern release engineering, published RC1 right off the feature-freeze date, which matches the schedule to the day. A bit of calendar discipline, and worth flagging. He's backed by a steady core: Marek "mbien" Bien, Jaroslav Tulach, Matthias Bläsing, Nicola Isotta, Jahodaj, Laszlo Kishalmi, Pepness, and Emilian Bold. Two contributors made their first contribution this cycle, wilx and gem-bricks.

If multi-module navigation is what draws you in, that nested-project change is probably the single most useful thing here. Otherwise, this is a mature, fix-focused candidate from one of open source's most durable tools. It's arguably the least exciting release of the year, and that's exactly why it exists.

Head here to the GitHub releases page if you want to test it yourself.