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PMD 7.21.0 (30-January-2026)

30-January-2026 - 7.21.0

The PMD team is pleased to announce PMD 7.21.0.

This is a minor release.

Table Of Contents

• 🚀️ New and noteworthy
  • 🚀️ New: Java 26 Support
  • Build Requirement is Java 21
  • CPD
• 🌟️ New and Changed Rules
  • New Rules
  • Changed Rules
  • Deprecated Rules
• 🐛️ Fixed Issues
• 🚨️ API Changes
  • Deprecations
• ✨️ Merged pull requests
• 📦️ Dependency updates
• 📈️ Stats

🚀️ New and noteworthy

🚀️ New: Java 26 Support

This release of PMD brings support for Java 26.

There are no new standard language features.

There is one preview language feature:

• JEP 530: Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Fourth Preview)

In order to analyze a project with PMD that uses these preview language features, you'll need to select the new language version 26-preview:

pmd check --use-version java-26-preview ...

Note: Support for Java 24 preview language features have been removed. The version "24-preview" is no longer available.

Build Requirement is Java 21

From now on, Java 21 or newer is required to build PMD. PMD itself still remains compatible with Java 8, so that it still can be used in a pure Java 8 environment. This allows us to use the latest checkstyle version during the build.

... (truncated)

• 4558030 [release] prepare release pmd_releases/7.21.0
• 8fcf973 Prepare pmd release 7.21.0
• e91caec [doc] chore: add keywords for auxclasspath in Java documentation (#6429)
• ed0838b [doc] ADR 3: Clarify javadoc tags (#6392)
• 840a29f chore: update javadoc internal API tags (#6391)
• 75fb5eb chore: update javadoc experimental tags (#6390)
• c4c1edb chore: update javadoc deprecated tags (#6389)
• e7d9729 chore: update javadoc deprecated tags
• 8fb286a chore: update javadoc experimental tags
• 7dcfeea chore: add full description to internalApi javadoc
• Additional commits viewable in compare view

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