Pipeline steps stuck in "Queued" state indefinitely, started today without any config changes

[Dan Andrei Novac]

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing a sudden and critical issue with Bitbucket Pipelines that started about 3 hours ago (December 9, 2025).

The Problem:
All my pipeline steps are getting stuck in "Queued" state for extremely long periods (15-30+ minutes each) before they start running. Some steps never start at all and eventually fail with:

"Step exceeded processing limits and has timed out"

One step also shows System error status.

Important context:
- My pipeline configuration has NOT changed in 5 months
- This started happening suddenly today
- I'm using Bitbucket Cloud's default runners (NOT self-hosted)
- When steps DO eventually run, execution time is normal (1-2 minutes)
- The problem is 100% with the queue/scheduling, not the build itself

What I've observed:
- Staging branch: Took ~1 hour total (steps waited forever in queue, but ran quickly once started)
- Main branch: Completely failed - Pipeline #69 timed out while waiting in queue
- Affects parallel steps AND sequential steps

My pipeline structure:

```yaml
- parallel:
fail-fast: true
steps:
- step: *security-scan
- step: *golangci-lint # This one shows "System error"
- step: *run-tests
- step: *build-production
- step: *docker-build-and-push
- step: *deploy-cloud-run
```

What I've tried:
- Re-running pipelines multiple times
- Checked status.atlassian.com (no incidents shown)
- Verified no config changes

Questions for the community:
1. Is anyone else experiencing this issue today?
2. Is there a known outage that isn't showing on the status page?
3. Any workarounds?

This is completely blocking my deployments. Any help appreciated!

Thanks!

[Marcus]

We figured it out:
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/bitbucket/announcing-v5-self-hosted-runners
Atlassian changed their pricing model for concurrent build steps on self-hosted runners. Now you have to pay for each extra concurrent build step.

[Dan Andrei Novac]

but I'm not using self-hosted runner

[Ben]

Hi @Dan Andrei Novac 

Could you please provide the exact System Error message that appears on the build?

Cheers!

- Ben (Bitbucket Cloud Support)

[Stefan Möbius]

We are also experiencing the same issue, albeit with self-hosted runners.

[Stefan Möbius]

Turns out that for self-hosted runners at least, this is the reason. Runners in version 5 have a limitation on the number of parallel steps, which causes some builds to just stop. No idea if and how this affects cloud runners, but it's probably worth a look.

[Noah Bailey]

This was the cause of our problem - the solution was to downgrade all the runners back to v3/v4 for the time being. 

[joshua botticher]

I'm experiencing the same issue, it began this morning and everything is stuck in queued status

[Marcus]

same here, we always see just two runners are picking up things. the rest stays in queued state