On the sidebar choose Spaces > any project > Knowledge base. Click on any article. Now on the right sidebar it will show "Space:".. but it's not the same meaning of Space as on the left sidebar.
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@Josh Sherwood thank you for the description of what's changing including the rollout timeline; it's very helpful.
Overall, I'm in support of moving away from Jira "projects". I was still hoping that there'd be some consideration to using a slightly different phrase (e.g. "workspace" - a space for your work) instead of using the same terminology in use with Confluence for a decade plus.
It feels a bit like we're trading one type of user confusion for another here. Any efforts to disambiguate "spaces" between Jira and Confluence would be greatly appreciated!
I am still failing to understand why there is confusion around the word "Project". Jira's whole intent is for project management, specifically for agile development, and it is fully understood that each "Project" in Jira is a project being worked on, with a start and end. Collaboration is still possible among other teams without having to rename it to "Space".
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@Chris Calvert I imagine internally we're going to end up with (singular focus) Project Spaces and (cross-functional) Team Spaces. That seems to be our only sensible approach to the terminology.
Thanks @Josh Sherwood for fixing the wording issues (not in the sense of work item ;-)) for german language.
Overall, I am not in favour of these terminology changes. In technical environments, I believe it is good practice to use established expressions consistently throughout documentation and lifecycles to minimise doubt and questions within the end user community.
'A car is a car is a car' may sound boring, but it is consistent.
If you use different terms such as 'car', 'vehicle', 'auto', 'automobile', 'motorcar' or 'wheels', it will raise questions as to whether you mean the same thing.
and we wanted to introduce more user-friendly terminology for teams as quickly as possible.
I sincerely hope this was meant as a joke (but I know it wasn't).
So Atlassian made a bad decision to go with the rename of projects to spaces. Then they implemented that change poorly. Projects are randomly renamed in some places and randomly they are still "projects".
Go to a Permission Scheme. The permission is Administer Projects. You can grant that permission to Project Lead, for example. Or, you can grant it to a member of a Space Role.
Try to create a Data Security Policy and good luck understanding what Coverage type "Spaces and projects" means now. Hey Atlassian, you forgot to rename projects to spaces here. And when you do rename it, what will it be? "Spaces and spaces"?
Try to read documentation, kb articles. How many of them are still using terms "issue" and "projects"? Tons of them.
these are just some examples I came across, and I didn't do it on purpose, I am sure there are tons more
It is a mess. A poorly done job. You may argue that the renaming of projects to spaces is actually a good decision (and you would be wrong). But you can't argue that you failed to actually do the renaming. Why do customers have to deal with this? Customers pay to get quality. This is not it. You can't rename it in 20 places this month, in 10 places next month, and in 150 places next year. Actually, we can see that you can, but you shouldn't. Would you do it properly please?
And when asked in a comment above "how so?", Atlassian's excuse is "we wanted to introduce more user-friendly terminology for teams as quickly as possible.". What? It was like that for 15-20 years, then came 2025 in which many users no one asked to rename projects to spaces, and now you are suddenly in such a hurry to make it as soon as possible that you do a messy rename job.
Bad job every step of the way: decision making, implementation, communication.
Why? Why don't you respect customers who pay money for your products? Why don't you respect your 'ecosystem' - people who try to sell your products, administer them and try to teach others to do it? Why don't you respect yourself and allow releasing/deploying such a bad job to a very wide audience?
Sure, they might have thousands of places to make the change.. but then take some weeks to do it properly.
It's specially ironic with all the recent changes and all the talk about "consistency"... The last thing I think of Atlassian is about anything being consistent anywhere.
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 9, 2025 edited
@Andriy KozynetsApologies, Andriy. It appears that some UI references to 'project' were missed during the updates. Thanks for highlighting these, I've passed it on to the team and they'll be fixed shortly.
Thanks for sharing your feedback on this terminology update. I understand that this change has raised some concerns, particularly around the overlap with Confluence's established use of 'spaces.'
Here's a bit more context on this decision:
Consistency across apps: Our goal is to create a more seamless experience across Atlassian apps by standardising terminology. Just as concepts like settings, users, and notifications are consistent across apps, using 'spaces' as a common term for containers of work and information helps build familiarity and ease of navigation. This is especially important as teams increasingly use multiple apps together.
Simplified connections: By aligning terminology, we hope to provide clearer connections between different areas of our apps, e.g. the ability to associate any 'space' to a team profile, or link it to Goals and Atlassian Projects will become more intuitive.
We know that this change might initially be a bit jarring and could cause some temporary confusion. However, we believe that it will ultimately lead to a more consistent and improved user experience for teams.
It is very interesting to watch the trend of software companies. Ones which are successful in the beginning and addressing a clear need, seem to drift into more and more complexity over time and seem to make changes for the sake of justifying their existence or trying to "keep up with the Jones's." Jira keeps making changes and the official story of why often is lost in word salad explanations which leave confusion and bewilderment for simple users like myself which only a couple years ago found Projects as sensical and helpful, but I was left with why not a clear option to rollforward a Project but had to go to a 3rd party plug in like Deep Clone. So...instead of fixing that, we have these incremental changes which, again, add complexity without seemingly real help for those of us who want a sensical SaS experience that doesn't leave us scratching our heads from week to week.
If this comment leaves you scratching your head, welcome to the club.
I must say.. This is such a breath of fresh air. It doesn't have the same glamour as a 'New AI tool!', but this was needed so badly to avoid confusion. Especially as we try to push business users into Jira, this was a BIG source of confusion.
You mentioned what to me should be the right word (and the one I've used for a long time): "Container"... "Space" will get confused with Confluence. My opinion only.
I’m honestly very disappointed with this terminology change from “Project” to “Space” in Jira.
This isn’t just a cosmetic update — it breaks years of established clarity between Jira Projects and Confluence Spaces. When we hear Project, we know it’s Jira; when we hear Space, we think of Confluence.
Even if there are currently no major impacts on JQL, APIs, or smart values, this still feels like an unnecessary and confusing change.
And from a technical standpoint, how are we supposed to distinguish between {{space.id}} in Confluence and {{space.id}} in Jira?
The term Project is deeply integrated into Jira’s structure — Project Lead, Project Category, Project Roles, Project Settings, Project Permission Scheme, and so on. Turning all of that into Space Lead, Space Category, Space Permission Scheme… just sounds wrong and out of place.
Jira Projects had structure. Jira Spaces have… well, space. I went to update a ticket and drifted straight into Confluence. Same word, wrong Space. 🤦♂️
This changes seems to be designed to create confusion, instead of what it claims "to reduce confusion" An absolutely idiot change to be perfectly honest. Users are already confused and when they need support do not define if they are seeking help in Jira or Confluence, but at least when they said "Space" it was clear it was Confluence.. now there is no indication what so ever.
Also, we work in projects.. not "spaces" so we now have a project in a space but it s called space instead of what it is .. a project???? How does this make any sense what so ever.
Like it was not bad enough you started calling your different products "apps" creating absolute confusion if it is a plugin/app someone is referring to .. or a Atlassian product .. and absolutely ruined the navigation adding multiple clicks to almost every action , for no good reason at all. Now you want to call a project "space" ?? Did all talented people with common sense get fired for AI at Atlassian, or did you just get a new CEO or a new head Designed that just wants to put "their stamp on things" by destroying everything because they have no clue ?
Josh Sherwood, have you ever used any Atlassian product, or are you just new here ?
I have now studied Atlassian’s announcement about renaming Jira "Projects" to "Spaces" across all Jira Cloud products, and I must admit I find the reasoning behind this change questionable.
Jira has long been positioned and adopted as a project management tool - a system for organizing work around defined goals, timelines, and deliverables. The term "project" has always aligned with this purpose, even if Jira’s implementation diverged from traditional PM methodologies. Replacing "project" with "space" introduces ambiguity, especially for teams that rely on clear terminology to distinguish between tools and workflows.
In Confluence, the term "space" makes sense - it refers to a collaborative area for documentation and knowledge sharing. But in Jira, this shift feels misaligned. If Jira is no longer centered around projects, what does that mean for roles like "Project Lead"? Are we now expected to refer to them as "Space Leads"? This change risks diluting the clarity of responsibilities and workflows.
Atlassian claims this is a purely linguistic update to better reflect how Jira containers function—as flexible hubs for ongoing work rather than time-boxed initiatives. However, this overlooks the fact that many teams still use Jira to manage actual projects with defined scopes. The new terminology may confuse users, especially when onboarding new team members or integrating Jira with other tools.
Moreover, the overlap with Confluence terminology is problematic. Both Jira and Confluence now use "spaces" to describe fundamentally different entities. This could lead to misunderstandings, especially in organizations where both tools are used side-by-side. As one community member aptly put it, using the same term for different concepts is not "speaking the same language"—it’s a recipe for confusion.
There’s also the practical burden this change imposes. Training materials, documentation, internal guides—all need to be updated. And during the transition, users will encounter inconsistent terminology across the UI, filters, and APIs. This inconsistency undermines the user experience and adds unnecessary friction.
While I appreciate Atlassian’s intent to evolve and unify its ecosystem, this particular change feels poorly justified and disruptive. If the goal was to distinguish Jira’s containers from the newly introduced "Atlassian Projects," perhaps a more distinct term—like "Workspaces" or "Hubs" - would have been more appropriate.
I usually welcome innovation from Atlassian, but this update seems to prioritize internal alignment over user clarity. I hope the team will reconsider or at least provide more flexibility for customers to choose terminology that fits their context. - Casper
I understand that smart values will continue to use the {{project}} terminology, but is that for future rules as well, and not just our existing ones? Thanks!
Another Atlassian "solution" in search of a "problem".
If you're an Atlassian Product Manager/Owner and this statement doesn't resonate with you, you should step back and complete some very much needed introspection. Maybe I'm just too old-school when it comes to Jira and Confluence. I'm sure these new whizbang things are for someone, but I can't fathom who.
To be clear, in terms of my current Atlassian product usage, I/we have definitely conveyed our displeasure and concerns to our account folks and the product folks they brought along. There was a lot of "we've heard that" said, but as we see here, the "solutions" keep coming. I do hope they take some of what we had to say to heart.
It's to the point where I feel like a need a 3rd-party implementation consultant, and yes, they actually suggested we look into a small limited engagement consultant. FAIL! When this is what I have to do, you've lost me.
Project = Space more confusing for the end users. Admins will type more in the slack to explain this change. Thank God It is not reflecting the API, JQL filter and Automation yet.... it'll get deprecated eventually. Next thing you know issues that are now work items will be pagesor confluence pages will become work items ??
@Josh Sherwood since it is now clear Jira is no longer ment to be a project management tool, since it will no longer even be possible to create projects in it, and you can no longer even assign a project manager /lead in it anymore, what is Jira suppose to be used for now?
It also raises the question are Atlassian planning to launch a new tool to use for us that actually work in projects and need a good project management tool, now that Jira is getting dispose of as this tool?
We work in Projects, we have project managers and project leads managing projects, we do not have "Spaces" or 'Space leads' or 'Space managers' something that does not even exist, because we are not NASA or ESA!
If your goal is to ruin your Products, sorry 'apps' 🙄, and create confusion among users , you are doing a great job. Maybe you should stop having 'AI' write your marketing material, because you are not selling this change at all. It is obvious what you are doing, making changes for changes sake .. and the cost of your customers of your super expensive solution, and not at any point trying to improve the experience, instead you seem intent to destroy it.
The old "jira project" never was a 1:1 projection (no pun intended) of a real project. As you can read through out the forums many companies had problems to explain their employees that their project is only a part of a jira project or covers several jira projects. Many companies are happy for the change to "space".
@Wurm Peter just as you though the Marketing BS lingo could not get worse "Projects is now a plattform app" 🤦♂️
so because a few companies struggled to explain what a project is, and how to work with projects to their employees , Atlassian has decided to make sure we all struggle to explain wtf a "space" is . wow Who are these companies that were struggling with this basic concept?
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