Coming soon: Jira seasonal releases

[#1]

Update: we shared more details about how Jira seasonal releases will land in our release tracks in this article.

Atlassian is committed to listening to feedback and evolving how we work to improve our customers' and partners' experience. We’ve repeatedly heard from our stakeholders how challenging it can be to keep up with changes we ship to all our apps, but especially Jira. We’re proud of our velocity and how frequently we ship improvements to hundreds of thousands of Jira customers, but we need to do communicate better and help you prepare. What we deliver is just as important as how we deliver it.

I’m excited to share that Jira will adopt a new seasonal release cycle in 2026. This is intended to create several predictable moments through the year where major user-facing features will be shipped. We believe the result should be easier to plan for, reduce surprises, and ensure a higher quality experience when features land.

Here’s what to expect

Three seasonal releases in 2026 for new Jira features and enhancements. Two of these will align to our Team and Team Europe events, with an additional release in between.

Release timeline in northern hemisphere seasons:

• Spring release surrounding Team

• Summer release in between Team events

• Autumn release surrounding Team Europe

Each seasonal release will include new features and enhancements to existing experiences, and we will commit to providing resources ahead of each to release to communicate what’s coming. These will be in addition to the product updates shared in Atlassian admin.

With the exception of small changes (like bug fixes, backend work, and performance improvements), new features will only be shipped during these three release events so admins can plan with confidence. As always, admins will receive additional direct communication for the most important, highest-impact changes.

When & where to expect it

Our first release in this new format will land around Team ‘26 on May 5-7. We hope you’ll join us in Anaheim, but of course all communications will be sent digitally across email, in-product messages, and Atlassian Community.

🌟 As long as you have an active Atlassian account with access to Jira, you will receive all updates pertaining to each seasonal release. 🌟

Please note: some features announced at Team '25 Europe and Q1 2026 deliverables on our Cloud roadmap will release on schedule before the spring release.

How to get in touch

Please look out for info about the next release in your inbox as we approach Team '26. In the meantime, drop us a comment below if you have any questions.

We hope this new process will bring more predictable and pleasant Jira experiences in 2026!

---

FAQ

Which changes will be included in these releases?

Our intent is for all non-trivial user-visible changes to be included in each Jira release. We will continue to deliver bug fixes, performance improvements, minor cosmetic improvements, security updates, and infrastructure optimizations on a continuous basis. Some cross-app Atlassian capabilities that are accessible through Jira like Rovo Chat and Agents, notifications, or the app switcher will continue to update on different intervals.

How will changes be released to customers on the bundled release track?

For Jira Cloud Premium and Enterprise customers, your release track settings still apply. Each Jira release will still be delivered to the preview track in your sandbox for one month before being released to your production instance.

More details: When to expect seasonal releases with Release Tracks

Will Atlassian continue to test changes with customers?

For all user-visible changes we will gather both qualitative and quantitative feedback from customers through a balanced approach of experimentation and early access or beta programs where appropriate.

Will all changes be released at once?

The changes will be delivered over 1-2 weeks into the continuous track (and then into other release tracks). We will provide these dates in advance so that all admins are aware of the general timeframe when changes are coming, regardless of their release track.

Which Atlassian apps are included?

Currently this change only applies to Jira (software and business spaces) and there are no immediate changes to other apps in the Jira family (Jira Service Mangement, Jira Product Discovery) or other apps like Confluence and Loom. Our intent is to prove the customer benefits of this model (so your feedback is incredibly valuable) and then scale it to other Atlassian apps.

How are you consolidating sources of change information about Atlassian apps?

We don't have any immediate plans to eliminate or consolidate other sources of change information. The focus of our initial communications will be to help our admins understand the major updates coming in each release and have more predictability about when they are coming. Jira is working with the App updates team to improve the quality of change announcements and we will review opportunities to consolidate later in 2026 based on data and feedback from the Spring and Summer releases.

[Raúl Carrera López]

Thank you @Dave Meyer this is awesome!

Hope t see you again on the next Team event.

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thanks for the update @Dave Meyer , how much notice are you anticipating we will get of the content of each of these releasers?

[Dirk Ronsmans]

@Dave Meyer ,

Good to see that Atlassian is taking steps in making it easiers for admins to plan better for changes to the platform.

I am a bit confused tho how this will mix with the Release tracks.

How will changes be released to customers on the bundled release track?

For Jira Cloud Premium and Enterprise customers, your release track settings still apply. Each Jira release will still be delivered to the preview track in your sandbox for one month before being released to your production instance.

 So does that mean that if you are on a bundled release track these seasonal releases do not apply or will it only affect the preview track where the new seasonal releases will hit the sandbox a month ahead of time and then production on the regular timeframes but outside of those not other bundled releases?

Also, will this also apply to JSM/CSM or only Jira?

Would appreciate a little more clarification on that!

[Dave Meyer]

@Dirk Ronsmans apologies for the confusion. To clarify, we were just confirming that the seasonal release will still ship to the Preview track before production release, and will ship to customers on the Bundled track after it has been released to customers on the Continuous track.

@Stephen_Lugton we expect to start communication about the contents of release 1-2 months beforehand (so this March for the first release) but will continue our standard practices of sharing information about specific features early and asking for feedback in the Community, and will continue to provide additional comms for features we expect to require the most change management.

Obviously this is a new process, so we will certainly assess after the first release around Team '26 this year and iterate for the subsequent releases.

[Robert Eiser]

This is a great decision @Dave Meyer thank you! Having a coordinated release should significantly help admins to communicate changes with our team! I assume that there will be release notes shared along with the date for each release? 

Thank you for making these improvements to the change management process at Atlassian.

All the best,

Robert

[Mathew Lederman]

@Dave Meyer where can we expect to see release information?

Today I have to check the following locations for updates:

1. Changelogs: https://developer.atlassian.com/
2. Atlassian Cloud Changes: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/blog/2026
3. My bundled release tracks: admin.atlassian.com
4. Forum posts on upcoming changes that aren't announced anywhere else, like this one: community.atlassian.com
5. Atlassian Cloud's Roadmap, which provides very little but sometimes crucial details: https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/cloud
6. Atlassian Product & News: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/product-news

Are you adding a 7th source admins will have to check? Or will these details be shared on one of the 6 different sites admins already have to keep a close eye on to not miss anything? 

[JG Meillaud _]

Awesome! Can't wait to see how it goes.

Thanks a lot @Dave Meyer 

[Jonathan Santos]

Hi @Dave Meyer  I'm going to write a summary to share with my LinkedIn colleagues. Thanks.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

I lick it, @Dave Meyer  I mean, I like it. Sorry, my accent got in the way.

• a little more organized
• a little more prepared
• a little more focus
• a little more informed

sounds like a formula for success!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

This sounds promising! Let's see how it goes :)

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

@Dave Meyer , That's fantastic news.  It's been like being in a washing machine as a Jira admin trying to track and notice all the changes that are coming our way.  Some in the release notes, and some not!  I really look forward to a less frequent delivery so that all users have time to settle into changes before the next one hits them.

Can I ask as per previous comments that the Release notes be looked at more carefully.  The Release notes for those bundled changes should include ALL the changes coming our way.   The Atlassian champions slack has a fun time trying to guess at the release notes.  Who got that change?  They said I was getting this change, but it didn't show up?  What does this change even mean? This change showed up and was in the release notes from 3 months ago?

Understanding that hot fix/bugs/performance issues do need to be addressed ASAP.  

Thanks so much for listening!!!   

[Matt Doar _Adaptavist_]

This is a promising change, glad to hear it!

[Jeffery Candiloro]

Sounds great. Just one thing - the release titles only make sense for half the planet. For the other half, late April-early May is Autumn, late July is Winter and October is Spring. Maybe think about changing the names to account for all your customers.

[Patricia Francezi]

adding to @Mathew Lederman 

7 - updates that are not mentioned in any of the previous location. 

The release notes also needs an improvment - organizing on how to use. 

The release management does not show when the release was done on your instance. 

Not all releases are managed by continuous or bundled tracks. 

So, yes, I also needed to provide a feedback, that in order to help Atlassian sell more, as admins we need to be better informed, and the release dates be real. 

i.e - the formula custom field, that everyone is waiting but no one saw it.... 

[Jay Cameron]

This is great news for a regulated Enterprise customer like my shop. Can you please clarify if this extends out to the greater Jira family (JSM/JPD/CSM)? Thanks!

[Matt Doar _Adaptavist_]

Google seems to think that 90% of the earth's population live in the northern hemisphere, which is more than I would have guessed. And think of some other names that have been used - "Data Center" was a piece of software not a large building with no windows 

[Darryl Lee]

Hey @Dave Meyer, @Mathew Lederman brings up an excellent point. Is this yet another place that admins will need to use to track changes?

As @Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_ mentions, we have a hard enough time tracking Bundled Release Track Notes, which in theory should have been doing what Seasonal Cycles promises:

Plan, prepare, and ensure the success of product changes with release tracks

And I'm still a bit unclear on how this works. Is it:

• Every 4 months(ish) Atlassian "bundles" up changes for the season
• For users on Continuous Track "The changes will be delivered over 1-2 weeks"

That makes sense, I guess, and good for those lucky ducks.

But...

The changes will be delivered over 1-2 weeks into the continuous track (and then into other release tracks). We will provide these dates in advance so that all admins are aware of the general timeframe when changes are coming, regardless of their release track.

(Emphasis mine.)

... so if Release Track ALSO gets those every 4-month bundles, what value does Release Track serve? Do we even still need it?

Like, we currently get a new Bundled Release every month (Second Tuesday).

If you're bundling changes Seasonally, does that mean we don't get any monthly releases between seasons?

Don't get me wrong - I would LOVE to only have to do the exercise of "Oh noooo boy! What is changing in Jira and Confluence?" once every 4 months instead of every month.

But I'm just trying to get clarity here.

Oh and also:

I'd also LOVE to retire this little side-project: Unofficial Atlassian Release Tracks Notes, so I really do hope that Seasonal Release Notes are:

• Public and permanent (NOT on a poorly searchable/non-bookmarkable blog, or in an admin-only administrative console).
• More detailed than the current Continous OR Release Track notes - screenshots, links to documentation, Community Forum announcments, JAC tickets fixed, etc.
• Organized by sub-product (Just Jira, Team/Company-managed Projects, JSM, JPD) an by audience (put Admin features at the end, separate from all the User-facing features). 

Thanks!

[Ari Raatikainen]

I believe our Nordic customers will welcome this. Currently, changes are introduced too frequently, which makes it difficult for users to stay aware of new features and understand their intended use. As a result, overall satisfaction with the Atlassian solution has been declining.

[Jared Schmitt]

Hi @Dave Meyer 

To second what @Mathew Lederman said: Can you please unify updates to 1 place? 

Even here in the community updates are released in different groups. While this makes sense for some ( I only care about stuff affecting my group), it doesn't for others (I'm an admin and need to manage a whole org). The most simple way to achieve this is to use a unified tag for all these posts:

• "eap" for all EAP-announcements
• "update" for all updates, like yours
• etc

Part of our job as admins is to convince those in our company that spend money to spend it on Atlassian software and not on competitors. And neither Atlassian nor we look good when there is a "surprise" release no one was aware of.

What I want:

1. One single place where all updates are released: For devs, for admins, for users, etc. No guesswork involved.
2. Proper filtering so I can filter out the noise and only keep what is relevant to me.
3. RSS feed/email subscription/whatever to exactly this filtered list of news.

We're in 2026, building AI agents and LLMs, but can't get comms right? We can do better I'd say :) 

[Philipp Sendek _catworkx_]

That's great news and a lot of our customers will appreciate this!

[Martin Böhme]

This is awesome!

[__ Jimi Wikman]

This is an interesting shift, but it comes with a ton of confusion, as you can see from the comments. I already have a very long video about the state of releases and the lack of holistic communication about changes, and this will add to that for sure.

First, let me just say that I think having quarterly, or in this case tri-annually (you could not stick to a quarterly cycle like the rest of the world? ;)) is a good thing. The continuous delivery with the high pace that you have, with the suboptimal documentation, is driving everyone nuts.

That being said, you are now making big bangs with many changes, and based on what you are saying here, the rollout will be 1-2 weeks after the release dates. That means that there will be a significant amount of change coming every 4 months (20-40+ based on historical data).

That means that if there are things in those releases that will affect customer organizations, they need time to plan, organize, and execute those changes in their organizations. 1-2 weeks is not going to cut it, so will you add the changes to the appropriate release period based on the estimated customer impact, or will you still just put it in the closest one?

I expect 6-8+ weeks' notice before a major change is released to have time to review and plan for it. Will that happen now with this new cadence, or will it just be a bigger impact release that can cause more frustration than we have in the continuous track today?

...and lastsly, will we get more detailed release notes soon? Some release notes are basically one line, where you have to spend time trying to decipher where in the platform the change actually takes place.
 

[Oz Ben-Eliezer]

Great news!

It will save us a lot of effort to have to update our Chrome extension that fixes Atlassian's "improvements" only three times a year instead of on a weekly basis.

[Bryan Guffey]

@Dave Meyer - this is great news! Looking forward to it! 

For folks asking about where release information will be, you’ll still always be able to visit https://unofficialroundup.com and keep up to date with release information! 

[joao zampa]

This is excellent news! I believe moving to seasonal releases is a huge step forward in helping customers actually adopt and leverage new features.

Currently, it is quite a challenge to keep track of the continuous stream of changes—it often feels like we are constantly playing catch-up. Having dedicated, predictable release windows will allow us to properly allocate time for review and planning. This structure should really help us be more proactive rather than reactive, ensuring we can get the most out of what you ship. Thanks for listening to the feedback!