Announcing Java updates of Jul 15, 2025 for 8, 11, 17, 21, and 24: thoughts and resources

TLDR: The new updates are 1.8.0_461 (aka 8u461), 11.0.28, 17.0.16, 21.0.8, and 24.0.2, respectively. More on the updates below, including links to more info on each of them including what changed, bug fixes, and the security fixes each version contains. (I also offer a quick assessment of the updates with respect to my primary audience, users of CFML engines.)

Yep, kind of crazy that there are now 5 current Oracle Java releases, for "reasons". And usually openjdk updates are released at the same time or soon after.

Oracle calls these updates "critical patch updates" (yep, "CPU"), but they are in fact scheduled quarterly updates (Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct, with specific dates listed here), so that the "critical" aspect of this nomenclature may sometimes be a bit overstated. As is generally the case with these Java updates, most of them have the same changes and fixes across the four JVM versions, though not always.

For some folks, that's all they need to hear. For others, read on.

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