Early Access Program

IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2 EAP Is Open

The Early Access Program (EAP) for IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2 is now ongoing. The first EAP builds are already available in the Toolbox App, on the website, and as a snap for Ubuntu. As always, EAP builds are free to use until the release ships, and the feedback you send genuinely helps shape the final version.

In this post, we’d like to share the general direction we’re taking for this release cycle.

Most importantly, we are working to maintain the balance between AI-assisted coding and classic development workflows (where manual coding is still the main activity).

For AI users, we are introducing the skill repository for your agents right in the IDE and actively working to improve next edit suggestions, add AI-powered full method generation, and expose more IDE knowledge via MCP.

With full method generation, when you call a method that doesn’t exist yet, the IDE’s AI will give you the option to generate both the signature stub and the full implementation body, using the same Tab-to-accept flow you are already familiar with.

MCP will make more debugging capabilities visible to agents. This will allow agents to set breakpoints, including newly introduced logpoints.

Now that agents have moved into the CLI, we are working to ensure that IntelliJ IDEA’s built-in terminal offers ideal support for them. It will support drag-and-drop file paths and image pasting when you’re talking to a CLI coding agent, plus the project’s JDK is available without manual PATH setup.

For those who prefer classic development workflows, we’re bringing revamped dependency completion to build scripts. In the dependency section, the IDE will provide completion only where relevant – artifact coordinates, scopes, and relevant version – based on the local cache and server-side knowledge.

You’ll also be able to run Flyway and Liquibase migrations from the same context menu and data source view you use for everything else, with dedicated run configurations for each tool. This keeps migrations in the same workflow – whether you’re spinning up a new module or fixing a broken state on staging.

But no matter your preferred way of coding (even if you combine methods), you are still in control of what ships, so understanding, reviewing, and debugging the code is just as important as ever.

We’re continually improving Spring Debugger to provide even more runtime information. The editor will show security indicators next to your endpoints and tell you which roles unlock them, so you can see at a glance whether a controller method is protected and how.

We’re also working to bring a new Hibernate Debugger that shows the SQL or HQL that Hibernate is about to issue, lets you jump from a query straight to the line of Kotlin or Java code that triggered it, and allows you to run the query in the application’s own configuration. If you’ve ever asked, “Where is that query coming from?”, this feature is for you.

Logpoints are the “println debugger” you’ve always wished you had. Investigating a bug used to mean sprinkling System.out.println calls and rebuilding. In 2026.2, AI can place logpoints with the expressions you actually care about during a debugging session – no suspending, no recompile, and no leftover prints to clean up.

A cornerstone of IntelliJ IDEA is that we stay on the cutting edge in supporting underlying tech. Early support for Java 27, Kotlin 2.4.x updates, and Gradle 10 is coming.

Following the Kotlin and JPA improvements in 2026.1, in this release cycle, we’re continuing to sharpen Kotlin in Spring projects: clearer Kotlin-aware diagnostics, smoother data class interop, and fewer surprises when migrating an existing Java/Spring codebase to Kotlin.

And it should go without saying that we’re always working to boost product performance and overall quality, fix freezes and bugs, and reduce resource consumption.

Not every EAP build will have a dedicated blog post, but once the features we’re working on land in public builds, we’ll cover them in dedicated posts. Stay tuned!

Share your feedback

Take part in the Early Access Program by trying out the EAP builds and sharing your feedback with us. You can get in touch with us on X, Bluesky, or LinkedIn, or leave a comment below. If you come across a bug or something that doesn’t work as expected, please report it via our issue tracker.

Happy developing!