Why can't I add more than 100 category fields at the issue level?

[Maité Sedeyn]

Hi,

We currently use the Category fields to group our public tender clients. Each client is assigned to a specific category, allowing us to filter tasks by category and efficiently manage our to-do lists. This workflow has proven to be highly effective for our team.

However, following the 2026 updates, the number of available Category fields appears to be limited to 100. As we manage significantly more than 100 public tender clients, this limitation prevents us from organizing all of our files as intended.

Would it be possible to increase the maximum number of available Category fields or provide an alternative solution that supports a larger number of categories?

Thank you in advance for your help!

[Gor Greyan · Accepted solution]

Hi @Maité Sedeyn

As far as I'm aware, the limit of 100 Categories is currently a hard limit and isn't configurable. It was introduced as part of Atlassian's Cloud data limits and guardrails, and there isn't an administrator setting to increase it.

I also wasn't able to find an existing JAC suggestion requesting an increase to this specific limit. If supporting more than 100 categories is important for your use case, I'd recommend raising a new feature request in Atlassian's public issue tracker (JAC). That also allows other customers with the same requirement to vote and watch the request.

In the meantime, you may want to consider an alternative such as a custom select field (if it better fits your use case).

[Maité Sedeyn]

Thanks! We'll raise a feature request. 

[Dave Mathijs]

Hi @Maité Sedeyn Are you using the default Category system field (LOCKED) or have you created a custom field named Category?

Normally, there is a guardrail/threshold of 20,000 options/values per field (as from September 2026), see Data limits and guardrails