Coder Trainee

Feb 9, 2026 · Backend Development

Why IDEA Fails to Start a Java Project with “error: java: invalid source release: 10”

The article explains that the “invalid source release: 10” error occurs because the IDE is set to JDK 10 while the system JDK is 8, and it walks through checking the JDK version and aligning IDEA project, compiler, and pom.xml settings to resolve the issue.