Must the "default" case come last in a switch?

No.. But it is suggested to put it at the end to make the code more readable. The code shown below works fine.

public static void main(String[] args) {

    int i = 5;
    switch (i) {
    default:
        System.out.println("hi");
        break;

    case 0:
        System.out.println("0");
        break;
    case 5:
        System.out.println("5");
        break;
    }
}

O/P : 5

no, the default statement could also be the first one.