ETH gas limit might jump to 80M in January 2026. faster transactions and potentially lower fees coming

Ethereum devs are discussing raising the gas limit from 60 million to 80 million sometime after the Jan 7 BPO fork (the blob parameter only fork). More gas per block means more transactions and smart contract stuff can fit into each block, which can improve throughput and could ease fee pressure if the network is congested.

Christine Kim from Galaxy Digital shared notes from the All Core Developers call where Nethermind folks sounded confident about moving toward a 75M–80M gas limit after Jan 7. But there are still two client level optimizations that need to land first, so this isn’t a “done deal” yet.

Also small correction on the timeline: 2025 had three gas limit bumps. early Feb went 30M to 35M, July went to 45M, late Nov went to 60M. If 80M happens in January, that would be the first increase of 2026, not the fourth of 2025.

The Jan 7 BPO fork is also expected to raise blob capacity by another ~66% (separate from gas limit but related to scaling). Blobs are basically extra data space mainly used by rollups.

Devs meet again on Jan 5 to confirm plans, so nothing is locked yet. If it goes through, capacity should improve. fees coming down is possible, but not guaranteed.