TL;DR:
- The governance action to initiate the van Rossem hard fork has already been formally submitted on the Cardano mainnet.
- The Plutus Cost Model update was ratified on June 13, and its enactment is scheduled for June 18, 2026, at 21:45 UTC.
- The proposal for the van Rossem hard fork activation on the mainnet has a final expiration deadline set for July 18, 2026.
The Cardano network recorded a major technical milestone following the official submission of the governance action to initiate the van Rossem hard fork on the mainnet.Â
The van Rossem hard fork initiation governance action has been submitted on the Cardano mainnet.
An intra-era hard fork that introduces some new features and lays the foundation for the next major era, Dijkstra, which will ultimately bring Leios to Cardano mainnet.
Looking to… pic.twitter.com/IiB3t0Akke
— Intersect (@IntersectMBO) June 16, 2026
This procedure represents an intra-era hard fork that introduces new operational features to the platform. According to the ecosystem’s technical reports, this change establishes the necessary infrastructure foundation for the future Dijkstra Era, which contemplates the ultimate integration of the Leios scalability solution into the mainnet.
The implementation arrives after a testing period on the Preview and Preprod secondary networks throughout May and June 2026.Â
The development of this process required the prior execution of an update to the Plutus Cost Model (PCM) parameters. This modification was enacted on the Preview test network on May 8, following the release of node versions cardano-node-11.0.1 and db-sync-13.7.0.5 early that same month, subsequently extending to the Preprod network on May 16.
Governance timeline and voting phases
Following the results in the test environments, decentralized representatives (DReps) and Constitutional Committee members ratified the PCM update on the mainnet this past June 13.Â
Official information indicates that the timeline for the definitive network fork manages multiple execution windows according to the voting flow. If the current voting process progresses quickly, protocol data suggests that the formal ratification of the van Rossem fork could be consolidated on specific estimated dates between June 23 and July 18, 2026.
The ecosystem requires strict consensus among validators and governance actors before applying structural changes to the blockchain.
 If the required approval levels are met in the early days of the established period, the technical execution of the van Rossem hard fork could materialize as early as June 28, 2026. Should additional debates be required in the governance channels, the implementation window would extend to alternative phases scheduled for July.
The voting period for this specific mainnet proposal expires definitively on July 18, 2026, the date on which the final status of the upgrade will be determined.
