Cardano Dijkstra Upgrade Targets Major 2026 Milestones

Cardano is approaching a significant development period as preparations for the Dijkstra era accelerate, with several node releases, testing phases and a potential hard fork expected over the coming months.

The Dijkstra rollout is planned in two stages. Phase 1 will introduce Nested Transactions and Linear Leios, with developers targeting a Mainnet launch by the end of 2026. Phase 2 will add Peras through an intra-era hard fork currently planned for the second quarter of 2027.

According to Intersect, development is progressing across Cardano node software, ecosystem readiness and supporting tools. Cardano-node-11.1.1 is expected around September 7 for Mainnet use, removing the legacy tracing system and addressing known Genesis issues.

Cardano-node-11.2 is expected within roughly a month and will contain most of the Dijkstra feature set for testing. However, it will not serve as the hard fork release candidate and will exclude Leios components primarily related to consensus and block production.

The subsequent Cardano-node-11.3 release is expected within one to two months. It is being targeted as the Dijkstra hard fork release candidate and should include the complete functionality needed to cross the hard fork, including Leios. Cardano-node-12.0 will ultimately become the definitive hard fork node release, although its launch date remains undecided.

Following node 11.2, developers will gain access to a public DijkstraNet for testing features including Plutus V4, Nested Transactions and CIP-50. DijkstraNet will operate alongside MusashiNet, which will continue focusing on Leios development and evaluation.

Cardano is also planning node diversity workshops in Singapore on October 6 during TOKEN2049 and in London on November 13–14. Governance participants will be able to track proposed constitutional amendments related to Dijkstra.

Following adjustments to the technical roadmap, the moderate-confidence window for Dijkstra hard fork enactment is December 5, 2026, through January 4, 2027. A higher-confidence timeframe currently stretches from February 24 through March 26, 2027, leaving Cardano’s upcoming node releases and testing progress crucial to the upgrade schedule.