Monero FCMP++: testnet fork on October 5

On Monday, October 5, 2026, a network forks at Monero. What it affects is not the main network where your XMR sits: a separate test network forks, one the developers call a stressnet. Anyone holding Monero therefore has nothing to do on that day: no wallet action, no withdrawal from an exchange, no swapping. The changeover this test is working towards is nonetheless the most far-reaching alteration to Monero's privacy in years, and it still has no date for the main network.

That separation is the whole core of the story. There is a hard, documented date, and it concerns a test environment. And there is a rebuild with an open date that decides how anonymous Monero will be in a few years and how exchanges in the EU will deal with it. This article sorts the two apart and tells you which of them concerns your coins.

What forks on October 5: the beta stressnet, not the Monero mainnet

The developer team behind the changeover released version v0.19.0.0-beta.3.0 on Friday, September 25, 2026, the so-called FCMP++ and Carrot beta stressnet v3.0. According to the developers, this package forks away from its previous test network on October 5, 2026 at block height 3102800.

A stressnet is a deliberately loaded test network. It exists to bombard a protocol with more transactions, more data and more participants than everyday use would produce, and to see where it breaks. The coins in it have no value, the blockchain in it is not Monero's, and a fork there changes nothing about the main network.