How to set a transparent background of JPanel?

Calling setOpaque(false) on the upper JPanel should work.

From your comment, it sounds like Swing painting may be broken somewhere -

First - you probably wanted to override paintComponent() rather than paint() in whatever component you have paint() overridden in.

Second - when you do override paintComponent(), you'll first want to call super.paintComponent() first to do all the default Swing painting stuff (of which honoring setOpaque() is one).

Example -

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Graphics;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;


public class TwoPanels {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        JPanel p = new JPanel();
        // setting layout to null so we can make panels overlap
        p.setLayout(null);

        CirclePanel topPanel = new CirclePanel();
        // drawing should be in blue
        topPanel.setForeground(Color.blue);
        // background should be black, except it's not opaque, so 
        // background will not be drawn
        topPanel.setBackground(Color.black);
        // set opaque to false - background not drawn
        topPanel.setOpaque(false);
        topPanel.setBounds(50, 50, 100, 100);
        // add topPanel - components paint in order added, 
        // so add topPanel first
        p.add(topPanel);

        CirclePanel bottomPanel = new CirclePanel();
        // drawing in green
        bottomPanel.setForeground(Color.green);
        // background in cyan
        bottomPanel.setBackground(Color.cyan);
        // and it will show this time, because opaque is true
        bottomPanel.setOpaque(true);
        bottomPanel.setBounds(30, 30, 100, 100);
        // add bottomPanel last...
        p.add(bottomPanel);

        // frame handling code...
        JFrame f = new JFrame("Two Panels");
        f.setContentPane(p);
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        f.setSize(300, 300);
        f.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        f.setVisible(true);
    }

    // Panel with a circle drawn on it.
    private static class CirclePanel extends JPanel {

        // This is Swing, so override paint*Component* - not paint
        protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
            // call super.paintComponent to get default Swing 
            // painting behavior (opaque honored, etc.)
            super.paintComponent(g);
            int x = 10;
            int y = 10;
            int width = getWidth() - 20;
            int height = getHeight() - 20;
            g.drawArc(x, y, width, height, 0, 360);
        }
    }
}

Alternatively, consider The Glass Pane, discussed in the article How to Use Root Panes. You could draw your "Feature" content in the glass pane's paintComponent() method.

Addendum: Working with the GlassPaneDemo, I added an image:

//Set up the content pane, where the "main GUI" lives.
frame.add(changeButton, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
frame.add(new JLabel(new ImageIcon("img.jpg")), BorderLayout.CENTER);

and altered the glass pane's paintComponent() method:

protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
    if (point != null) {
        Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g;
        g2d.setRenderingHint(
            RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
            RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        g2d.setComposite(AlphaComposite.getInstance(
            AlphaComposite.SRC_OVER, 0.3f));
        g2d.setColor(Color.yellow);
        g2d.fillOval(point.x, point.y, 120, 60);
    }
}

As noted here, Swing components must honor the opaque property; in this variation, the ImageIcon completely fills the BorderLayout.CENTER of the frame's default layout.

In my particular case it was easier to do this:

 panel.setOpaque(true);
 panel.setBackground(new Color(0,0,0,0,)): // any color with alpha 0 (in this case the color is black