Java 17 Sealed Classes Explained with Examples (2026) Java 17 sealed classes explained with examples. Learn how to implement sealed classes in Java 17 and improve your code quality. In Java, classes can be either concrete or abstract. However, there are cases where we want to restrict the instantiation of a class to only a specific set of subclasses. This is where sealed classes come into play. Sealed classes are a new feature introduced in Java 17 that allows us to define a class that can only be extended by a fixed set of subclasses. This feature helps to improve code quality by making it more explicit and self-documenting. Before Java 17, we could achieve similar results using other design patterns, such as the "sealed" pattern using private constructors and static factory methods. However, this approach had its own set of limitations and was not as straightforward as using sealed classes.…