Azul, the only company 100% focused on Java, today announced the results of its 2026 State of Java Survey & Report. The annual study, based on responses from more than 2,000 Java professionals worldwide, reveals a dual trend shaping the enterprise landscape: a strategic pivot toward using Java as a foundational language for AI development, and an acceleration in the growing migration away from Oracle Java due to pricing and licensing concerns.

Java's Critical Role in the AI Era

While Java has long been the backbone of enterprise applications, the 2026 report highlights its growing significance in modern AI stacks thanks to its reliability, performance, security, and ability to run AI-enhanced services at scale. The 2026 State of Java Survey & Report shows that 62% of organisations now use Java to code AI functionality — up from 50% last year —reflecting a shift toward integrating machine learning models with existing Java applications. As enterprises move AI from experimentation to production, Java is becoming indispensable for scaling AI workloads.

In addition, 31% of respondents say more than half of the Java applications they build now contain AI functionality, supported by a mature ecosystem of Java-friendly AI libraries such as JavaML and Deep Java Library (DJL). The top capabilities survey participants say will be important for Java to remain competitive in an AI-enabled development landscape include long-term support for modern Java versions (35%), built-in security features (34%), observability insights (32%), support for large data access (30%), and integration with large language models(30%).

The Acceleration of Oracle Java Migration

Since Oracle introduced its employee-based pricing model in 2023, frustration across the Java community has only intensified. This year's State of Java Survey & Report reflects just how quickly concern is escalating: an overwhelming 92% of respondents report being concerned, while only 7% of respondents say they are "not at all concerned" about Oracle's pricing, nearly half the level recorded last year. Satisfaction in Oracle's Java licensing approach is eroding, prompting organisations to reassess whether maintaining Oracle Java aligns with their financial and operational strategies.

In response, enterprises are moving decisively. Eighty-one percent (81%) have migrated, are migrating, or plan to migrate at least part of their Oracle Java to a non-Oracle OpenJDK distribution, while a significant 63% intend to migrate their entire Java estate. Cost remains the number one driver (37%) for migrating away from Oracle. Additional reasons enterprises migrate include: a preference for open source (31%), uncertainty created by ongoing changes (29%) and Oracle Java audit risk (26%). Twenty-one percent of survey respondents have already been subjected to an Oracle Java audit.

Optimising Cloud Costs with a High-Performance Java Platform

As enterprises intensify their focus on cloud deployment efficiency, Java continues to play a central role in shaping their cost-optimisation strategies. Java's longstanding strengths – reliability at scale, mature performance tuning capabilities and ongoing advancements in start-up, warm-up, and runtime efficiency – make it one of the most productive and cost-effective development languages to operate in cloud environments.

The 2026 State of Java Survey & Report reveals that 97% of survey participants have taken actions to reduce their public cloud costs, and using a high-performance Java platform (41%) is one of the top five strategies they've implemented. By utilising faster, more efficient Java runtimes, businesses are able to process more transactions with fewer resources, translating to savings which directly impact their bottom line or help fund more strategic initiatives.

Despite clear momentum toward optimisation however, most enterprises still struggle with significant waste – 74% percent of organisations report more than 20% unused compute capacity in...