Deprecation of Forked Repositories Outside the Parent Workspace

[#1]

Hi Bitbucket Community, 

My name is Adam and I am a product manager with the Bitbucket Cloud team. On February 27, 2026, the ability to create new repository forks will be limited to the parent workspace. Existing forks to other workspaces will continue to function as normal for the time being. Where possible, we will automatically move existing cross-workspace forks to the original parent workspace. We will send another notification when this is planned. Please note, forked repositories where the creator doesn’t have write access to the parent workspace, the repositories will be left in place, and their fork associations with the parent repository will be broken.

Why we’re making this change:
This change positions Bitbucket Cloud to offer greater product reliability and introduce highly requested enterprise-grade controls like data residency.

We know that this will be a significant change for some of our customers, especially the open source community. While forks aren’t core to every Bitbucket customer’s workflow, we recognize that retiring open-source pull request support will be felt by those who depend on it.

What to expect:

• Users will no longer be able to create new cross-workspace forks after February 27, 2026.

• Existing forks to other workspaces will continue to function as normal for the time being.

• Adding the workspace slug is optional when using the Bitbucket Cloud REST API endpoint to fork a repository. Omitting the workspace parameter will assume the same workspace.

• At a later date, existing cross-workspace forks will be moved into the original parent workspace where possible.

  • Associated PRs of the forked repo remain and will function as normal

  • Once moved to the parent workspace, forked repo permissions may change based on the parent workspace.

• If moving a fork to the parent workspace is not possible or fails, you won't be able to file PRs to the parent repo of the fork, but can still file PRs inside the forked repo itself

Have questions or suggestions? We’d love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below.

[Dave Anderson]

Does "we recognize that retiring open-source pull request support will be felt by those who depend on it" mean that you no longer want to work with open-source developers, or is there some sort of work around you suggest for this?

[Colton Anderson]

Do you intend to provide any workarounds, extra settings, or features to help with development across workspaces, or is Bitbucket phasing out of open source work?

[Mouad El Kacem]

I get the technical reasons behind this change, but it’s still a big hit for open-source workflows. Cross-workspace forks make independent contribution possible without extra barriers, and removing that option risks limiting the openness and creativity that open source depends on.

I hope the team can offer an alternative or a clearer path to keep external contributions accessible.

[Tim Govers]

Any reason why I see the warning on top of a forked repository that IS in the same workspace as the parent repository?