Does Java main have to be in class?

The Java language requires you to write code in classes and provides no other mechanism to do so . Thus you need a class because Java says so. This, by the way, is virtually the case for all purely object-oriented languages. Because this is a reserved keyword in Java.

Java Classes/Objects Java is an object-oriented programming language. Everything in Java is associated with classes and objects , along with its attributes and methods.

The main method is static , so it doesn’t matter which class holds it.