Hibernate validation "Unable to initialize javax.el.ExpressionFactory" error

None of the above worked for me However This did: Right click on the project > Properties > Project Facets on the right most area select Runtimes tab and selct your Tomcat Runtime, this will provide the required libs available to the test.

You have 2 different incompatible versions of javax.el (3 and 2).

Just use this dependency, which will cover everything (it's the one we recommend in the GitHub repo's README.md but I need to update the getting started guide):

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.glassfish</groupId>
   <artifactId>javax.el</artifactId>
   <version>3.0.1-b08</version>
</dependency>

and remove all the other javax.el dependencies (API and impl). It should work like a charm once you're done.