It was true for a while that Kotlin got stuck on JVM 8 for its target bytecode, but it's no longer true, Kotlin supports all versions up to 15 now: https://kotl

It was true for a while that Kotlin got stuck on JVM 8 for its target bytecode, but it's no longer true, Kotlin supports all versions up to 15 now: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/compiler-reference.html#jvm-target-version https://kotlinlang.org/docs/compiler-reference.html#jvm-targ... I think the first Kotlin version to use post-Java 9 bytecode is the Kotlin 1.4.20 using invokedynamic for string concatenation: https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2020/11/kotlin-1-4-20-released/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2020/11/kotlin-1-4-20-rele... Kotlin sealed classes are planned to be rendered as JVM sealed classes when JVM sealed classes go out of preview (probably Java 17), and the same is planned for mapping Kotlin value classes as Project Valhalla user-defined primitive types. All these features obviously won't be available if you target Android, but they will still be there for you if you don't.