Ethereum Glamsterdam does not start on the mainnet on October 6, 2026, but on the Sepolia testnet. For your ETH on an exchange or in a wallet that day therefore means precisely nothing: no swap of balances, no new address, no pressure to act. When Glamsterdam will reach the real Ethereum network is open. To this day the Ethereum Foundation names only the quarter.
That matters because on this day several financial outlets claim something else. Anyone searching for the upgrade on September 30 finds headlines saying Glamsterdam has already launched. This piece separates the two: what actually happens on October 6, what Glamsterdam changes technically, and how you will recognise the real mainnet date when it comes.
Sepolia fork on October 6, 2026: a testnet, not a mainnet launch
The developers have set the Glamsterdam fork for October 6, 2026, on Sepolia. Sepolia is one of the public testnets of Ethereum: a complete image of the network running the same software, but in which no money of any value moves. The ETH on Sepolia is play money and is handed out from a faucet, not bought.
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