Introducing the Jira 2026 Spring Release

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Over the last few years, we’ve heard a consistent message from admins, champions, and power users: you like that Jira keeps improving, but it’s too hard to keep up with what’s changing, when it’s landing, and how to get your teams ready.

Earlier this year I shared that Jira is moving to a new seasonal release model in 2026 to provide our customers with clear points-in-time to prepare for high-impact changes. Seasonal releases make updates more predictable and help you understand not just the what but also the why behind them, so you can get more from Jira with fewer surprises.

If you’d like the full background and rationale, you can read that post here.

This first release is rolling out now and will be generally available for all Jira cloud customers by early May 2026.

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So, what’s new?

This release is about helping more teams do more of their real work in Jira, with AI that can move work forward instead of just tracking it. Jira’s structure and shared context make it an ideal place to kickoff and coordinate that work.

We’ve organized this around three themes:

1. Enabling you to assign work and get help on tasks from Rovo and other agents

2. Making Jira feel friendlier for every team and project

3. Giving admins better tools to scale Jira safely and with less manual effort

See everything that’s launching here – below is a preview.

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Put AI on your project team, not just in your tools

Teamwork with agents still requires…well…teamwork. Jira’s shared visibility, common data structures, and collaborative workspace feed the context agents need to actually produce valuable output. This release brings that future a little closer.

Agents in Jira: assign real work to agents

Jira now lets agents work alongside teammates using the same work items and workflows. Whether you’re building custom agents in Studio, using out-of-the-box Rovo agents, or connecting to third-party agents, you can now:

• Assign work items to agents

• @mention them in comments

• Embed them in workflow

Rovo search is now in Jira

Rovo brings cross-tool search into Jira so you always land in the right place. Jump straight to Jira work items when you’re searching for work, or open Rovo’s full-page search to ask broader questions and get summarized answers with links to relevant pages and resources from your tool stack.

A new reporting experience: design a dashboard for every team

The old Reports tab is now a focused hub inside each space, with customizable dashboards that pull in key data, charts, and Rovo insights to every team sees the metrics that matter most to them.

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A fresher, friendlier Jira for every team and every project

As we invest in agents, we’re also focused on making Jira feel approachable and useful for everyone who touches it – from software teams to business teams.

A new, personalized For You page

Get a single, cleaner view of what needs your attention, with assigned work, upcoming due dates, and relevant updates pulled into one place so nothing gets missed.

Guest access: secure external collaboration at no additional cost

Many projects and teams rely on agencies, vendors, or customers, but their work ends up in separate trackers or email threads. Guest access lets you invite these partners into specific Jira spaces at no additional cost, so everyone can work from one live, shared view.

Setup wizard: help every team land in the right space

A guided setup helps teams choose the right templates, add teammates, and connect to the workflows they actually use, so they spend less time configuring setup and more time doing real work.

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Tools that make Jira easier to run at scale

We know many of you are responsible for hundreds of users, multiple business units, and strict governance requirements. As Jira becomes more powerful – especially with agents – it also has to become safer and easier to run at scale.

Custom templates and delegated permissions to create spaces

Turn your best Jira space setups into reusable blueprints and safely delegate who can create new spaces from them, so teams move faster while admins keep structure and governance under control.

Beta features management: a clearer view into what’s coming next

A new beta features management page in Jira admin shows upcoming betas in one place and lets you turn them on or off, so you can test on your terms, and roll out more broadly when you’re ready.

Learn more about these launches and see everything else that’s new here.

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What to expect next

This release is the first step in our new launch cadence and in our journey to reshape Jira for agentic teamwork. Going forward, you can expect:

• Our public changelog and roadmap to stay updated with what’s new and what’s coming

  • We’ll soon be updating the “What’s coming” tab with a preview of our next release (July 2026), so subscribe and stay tuned

• Continued improvements in between for smaller fixes and performance work

The move to seasonal releases started from your feedback and we want to keep shaping it with you. If you have questions, thoughts, or suggestions on how we can make this cadence more helpful, drop a comment below. And if you’re joining us at Team ‘26 this May, I’d love to hear your feedback in person at the Jira booth.

Thanks for being on this journey with us,

Dave