JetBrains shipped IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1, and this release has more for Gradle users than usual. The official Gradle Best Practices guide is now baked into the IDE as inspections and quick-fixes.

The guide is part of the JetBrains × Google × Gradle collaboration, and it's now integrated into the editor. More than 30 practices have been authored to date, with the first batch live in 2026.1 and the rest landing in subsequent updates. Expect your IDE to start gently nudging you in the right direction.

Gradle 9.5.0 is out! This release includes:

• Task provenance in error messages and reports: when a task fails, Gradle now tells you whether it was registered by a build script, a settings script, or a plugin, making it much easier to track down the source.

• Type-safe Kotlin accessors for precompiled Settings convention plugin: *.settings.gradle.kts convention plugins now get the same IDE autocompletion and compile-time checking as Project-level conventions when the kotlin-dsl plugin is applied.

• Wrapper download retries: opt-in retries and retryBackOffMs properties in gradle-wrapper.properties reduce flaky CI failures on unstable networks.

Update your wrapper to get started:

./gradlew wrapper --gradle-version=9.5.0

Version 6 of gradle/actions is out! The GitHub Actions toolkit is used by over 45,000 open-source repositories and featured in GitHub's official Java starter workflows. Here's what's new and what it means for your CI.

Two caching paths, one action. Pick the path that fits:

• Basic Caching (new in v6.1.0, MIT-licensed): a fully open-source provider built on @actions/cache. Caches Gradle build files and outputs, derives cache keys from your build files, and wipes the cache cleanly when those files change; no stale restore keys piling up.

• Enhanced Caching (default): the proprietary gradle-actions-caching component, where the team is investing in future capabilities like production-ready Configuration Cache support and smarter Gradle User Home cleanup. Free forever for public repositories, currently in Free Preview for private ones.

Opt into Basic Caching with one line:

- uses: gradle/actions/setup-gradle@v6
  with:
    cache-provider: basic

Dependency management is one of the topics the Gradle community asks about most, and the one where small misunderstandings compound into the most painful build problems down the line.

The Gradle team has published "Dependency Management 1: Configurations" on DPE University. A free, self-paced course that starts from first principles: what a Dependency Configuration actually is, how declarable and resolvable configurations differ, and why the distinction matters when you're authoring libraries or debugging a dependency graph.

Develocity 2026.1 was released on March 25, with four headline themes:

• Develocity as a managed service: Gradle Technologies now offers a fully operated Develocity instance, removing the infrastructure, upgrade, and maintenance burden from your platform team.

• Enhanced MCP capabilities: skills and guided workflows on top of the Develocity MCP server encode years of build-engineering domain expertise, making root-cause and performance analysis reliable for both AI agents and human developers.

• Predictable ephemeral-CI startup with automated cache management: the Artifact Cache CLI tool is smaller, intelligently removes stale content from images, and can now be pointed directly at a known Edge node without first contacting the Develocity server.

• AI-Powered visual supply chain analysis: stop sifting through logs and static reports, and instead, instantly visualize dependency impact, vulnerability exposure, and compliance status across your entire artifact landscape.

The combination of Gradle 9.5.0 and Develocity plugin 4.4+ lets you publish Build Scans to your Develocity server by simply setting the COM_GRADLE_DEVELOCITY_URL environment variable; no need to modify the project or apply the plugin, making rollout across teams and CI pipelines effortless.