Announcing the next Confluence long term support release

[#1]

Hey Data Center Community,

We know that many of you have been awaiting the next Long Term Support (LTS) release for Confluence.

To help you prepare for your upgrade in advance, we want to let you know that Confluence 8.5 will be our next LTS release, planned for Q3 2023. If you plan to upgrade only once this year, we recommend moving to Confluence 8.5 when it becomes available.

What you should expect

Confluence 8.5 will be the first long-term support release on the Confluence 8 platform. Packed with benefits to allow growing enterprises to remain confident in their security while enabling users with productivity improvements for easy collaboration, you’ll also unlock powerful performance enhancements built to help you scale. Take a look at a selection of some of our new features that will be available to you with an upgrade to Confluence 8.5.

Performance and scale

To help achieve optimal performance for your team and organization, new features include:

• Site and space import/export improvements: Gain higher visibility and control over site and space import and export tasks when you move data between Confluence instances.

• Store attachments on Amazon S3 object storage: Store attachments on Amazon S3 object storage. If your team has a large or increasing data footprint, we recommend this optimized attachment storage method to help you efficiently scale in the future.

• Single space re-indexing: Save time by enabling administrators to re-index a specific space rather than requiring a full re-index.

Productivity and usability

To help your teams remain productive while working quickly and confidently, we are excited to share new features that will improve the product experience, such as:

• View inline comments in edit mode: Allow users to view and resolve inline comments while they are in edit mode.

• Improved emoji experience: Access all the emojis you’ve come to expect online and give your team more ways to engage, react, and express themselves.

• Search and find what you need with less fuss: Find what you’re searching for with less filtering, with an updated Confluence search ranking logic.

• User-management REST API: Save time with an new capability that allows admins to build custom automations, including the ability to automate critical links in user management such as granting, verifying, and revoking access.

Security and compliance

Confluence 8.5 includes updates and improvements to strengthen the overall security posture of the platform and better protect your organization’s sensitive information with benefits such as:

• Architectural upgrades: Unlock a more capable Confluence with updates to our foundational technology, allowing us to release more powerful products, faster.

• Improved Platform: Ensure you’re backed by the most up-to-date set of approved and supported libraries across the Data Center product including a wide range of bug fixes and additional capabilities in our platform to be built on into the future.

• Accessibility improvements: Enable all users to work more freely with accessibility fixes for our screen reader and keyboard-only cohort.

To better understand everything that has been made available to your since your last upgrade, check out the Confluence upgrade matrix. If you’d like to see what else is coming to Data Center, make sure to visit the Data Center roadmap.

Best,

The Confluence Team

[Bryan Guffey]

Will this be out prior to the EOL of Confluence 7.13 (Aug 17 2023)? Thanks!

[Rick Carini]

...or will you be extending the EOL for Confluence 7.13?

Traditionally you've usually supported two LTS releases at the same time.  Is this changing?

[Ollie Guan]

It's later than we expected, hopefully in July~August.

[Deiser Service Team]

Do we have an approximation of the release date of the new LTS?

It's almost July and we would like to know in order to plan future migration with our clients.

[Anurag Jalan]

Is there an approx date by when new LTS will be released? We are holding our upgrade for next LTS.

[Rilwan Ahmed]

Hi @Claire Chisholm ,

8.5 will only be DC instance or will we get server version download as well ? 
Presently we are using 7.13 and want to migrate to latest version in coming months. 

[Claire Chisholm]

Hi @Rilwan Ahmed 

Confluence 8.5 will be available for both server and Data Center! 

[Claire Chisholm]

Hi @Bryan Guffey & @[deleted] sorry for the delayed response.  Support for Confluence 7.13 will be extended to align with the release of Confluence 8.5! Thank you for your patience

[Ollie Guan]

Confluence 8.5 release EAP available now

https://community.developer.atlassian.com/t/confluence-8-5-release-eap-available-now/71283

[Qualcomm Support]

@Claire Chisholm , you mentioned the support of 7.13 will be extended until 8.5 is released. When will it be announced, and till when will it be supported? We need to quickly decide on upgrading our Enterprise Confluence Data Center to latest LTS version. So your quick response is appreciated. Kindly clarify.

[Claire Chisholm]

Hi @Qualcomm Support

The Confluence 8.5 LTS will release in Q3 of 2023, and the Confluence 7.13 release will be supported until the 8.5 release is live. Unfortunately, it’s not within our policy to announce specific release dates.

However, we’ve recently launched our early access program for Confluence 8.5 and you can refer to the EAP for more info on the upcoming LTS! 

Thank you! 

[Ollie Guan]

Confluence 8.5 is now available

@Qualcomm Support 

@Deiser Service Team 

@Rilwan Ahmed 

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Nice! :)

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Nice one! Thank you!

[Rilwan Ahmed]

Hi @Claire Chisholm ,

Confluence 8.5 Long Term Support Release Change Log  is pointing to 7.19 in https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/confluence-8-5-release-notes-1252010185.html. Please update the URL in the article

[Claire Chisholm]

Hi @Rilwan Ahmed I've asked the team to make this change! Thank you for bringing this to our attention!