docs: Announce core decision about JDK

_posts/2025-03-05-next-scala-lts-jdk.md.md

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+---
+category: announcement
+permalink: /news/next-scala-lts-jdk.html
+title: "JDK 17 will be the next minimum version required by Scala 3"
+by: Tomasz Godzik, VirtusLab & Scala Core Team
+---
+
+We recently asked for community input about changing the JDK version used by the
+Scala 3 compiler. We wanted to thank everyone for their input and announce the
+decision to switch to JDK 17 as the new minimum, starting with Scala 3.8 minor
+and the next LTS which will mostly likely be Scala 3.9.
+
+The discussion didn't uncover any compelling reason not to leave JDK 11 behind.
+11 is now nearly as antiquated as 8, and moving from 11 to 17 is not normally a
+difficult upgrade for users. 17 offers useful APIs and VM features. In the JVM
+world, requiring 17+ is already a mainstream position and is becoming more so
+with every passing month. Also, we increase Scala's minimum so rarely, we feel
+we should take this chance to aid open-source maintainers by reducing the
+testing and maintenance burden across the entire Scala 3 tooling and library
+ecosystems as much as we reasonably can.
+
+This change only concerns future minor versions of Scala 3. In particular, the
+Scala 3.3 LTS line is unaffected by this change. Scala 3.3.x releases will
+continue for at least a year after the next LTS line begins
+
+There are also no plans to change Scala 2’s JDK support and it will continue
+being built using JDK 8.
+
+The open discussion that led to this decision can be found at the
+[Scala contributors forum](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/next-scala-3-lts-version-will-increase-minimum-required-jdk-version).