Which Java version should I learn? What are the LTS versions?
Java has a new version every 6 months (in March and September). Every 2 years, one of them is an LTS (long term support) release, which gets updates for many years.
| LTS version | Released |
|---|---|
| Java 8 | March 2014 |
| Java 11 | September 2018 |
| Java 17 | September 2021 |
| Java 21 | September 2023 |
| Java 25 | September 2025 |
Learn the newest LTS (Java 25), because almost everything of Java 8, 11, 17 and 21 works in it, and you also learn the modern features. In a job you may meet Java 8, 11 or 17 code, so the older features are in this tutorial too.
Terminal
$ java -version 2>&1 | head -1
openjdk version "25.0.5" 2026-10-20 LTS
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