Private repositories inaccessible or deleted?

[wallacio]

Private repositories have apparently been deleted from a Workspace in my account. Nobody is able to access them - it is not a permissions issue.

I received an email from Atlassian on 7th November saying,

We have noticed that your workspace <personal> is currently empty. It hasn't been used in over 6 months, and it contains no repositories.

This workspace is going to be deactivated on November 12th, 2025, and is scheduled for deletion on December 9, 2025.

"Note: this deletion will not affect your Bitbucket user profile, other workspaces that you are a part of, or any other Atlassian products."

There was another workspace belonging to my account, which I can access by the correct URL, but it now contains no private repositories. No other team members, or our CI/CD pipeline can access them. It's almost like it doesn't exist.

It is absolutely critical that access to these is restored. If this is related to the email received, I am going to go ballistic. WTF is one supposed to do here?

[Syahrul]

Hey @wallacio 

Could you please provide the missing repository URL so I can quickly review it on my end?

The email you received was regarding an empty workspace; we don't delete any workspace that contains a repository.

Regards,
Syahrul

[wallacio]

Hello Syahrul,

I've since received an email from Atlassian saying that "we inadvertently removed permissions, or something similar. The workspaces were at least still there.

I've moved my repos to GitLab. My cardiovascular system cannot cope with this kind of terror.

Regards
W.

[Daria Kulikova_GitProtect_io]

Hello @wallacio ,

The best approach in this case is to reach out to Atlassian Support — they should be able to guide you. You can raise a ticket here: https://support.atlassian.com/contact/ 

For the future, it’s always a good idea to keep a backup of your Bitbucket repositories and metadata. You can do this using the built-in export option, DIY backup scripts, or a third-party backup solution. Thus, if your data disappears, you can always restore and access it.

[Jorge Cammarota]

Breath what happened does not mean your repositories were deleted, even if they’re not showing up.
Bitbucket never deletes private repositories automatically without:

Repeated warnings

Explicit confirmation

A full deletion window

A 30-day recovery period

And the email you received on November 7th refers only to a workspace that Atlassian detected as empty.
If that workspace truly “contained no repositories,” then Bitbucket would not delete anything meaningful.

So what is happening in your case?

What most likely happened (and how to fix it)
1. You are looking at the wrong workspace

This is the #1 cause when repos suddenly “disappear”.

Your account may have:

a personal workspace, and

a team workspace (or several)

The email you received refers only to the personal workspace that Atlassian flagged as empty.

But your actual private repositories may be in a different workspace — one that was not part of the warning.

Check all workspaces associated with your account

Go to:
https://bitbucket.org/account/workspaces

[wallacio]

Or, as it turns out, Atlassian messed up.