Jira’s fresh look and navigation

[#1]

Many of you have been asking when you can adopt Atlassian’s new navigation—now you can! We’re thrilled to announce its General Availability (GA) for Jira, Jira Service Management, Jira Product Discovery, Confluence, and Atlassian Home. In this article, you’ll find key details about what’s changing and when those changes will occur.

Read about how we built the new navigation.

What’s changing in Jira products?

Here’s what’s changing for Jira, Jira Service Management, and Jira Product Discovery:

All Jira products
Work across multiple projects more efficiently	Switch between your Jira projects easily, and select a starred or recent project from the sidebar navigation on the left.
Jira has a fresh new look and feel	We’re in the process of refreshing the Jira product family to bring you a cleaner, more modern feel to your workspace. Enjoy a polished experience that enhances productivity allowing you to focus on what matters most.
Customize your sidebar	Show, reorder, or hide navigation items in the sidebar to keep the focus on what’s important to you. Customize your sidebar Drag the line to customize Drag the item to show, reorder, or hide. Note: Any changes that you make to your sidebar are visible to you only
Software and business projects in Jira
Horizontal project navigation	The project navigation allows you to seamlessly navigate through software and business projects. Easily switch between various views and features relevant to the project you're viewing.
Customize your project navigation	As a project admin, you have control over your project navigation by reordering and removing project tabs for your team. Customize your project tabs to suit your team’s needs so your users can seamlessly switch between views with less clutter.
Create a board more easily for your company-managed software project	You'll still be able to create a board for your company-managed software projects directly from the sidebar navigation. Boards can also be starred, allowing you to easily navigate to the areas where you most often work.
Set colorful backgrounds in projects and boards	We’re bringing a splash of color to software projects. Project admins can customize their teams' projects and boards with colored backgrounds. Select More actions ( ) next to your project or board name in the sidebar or header, and select Set project background.
Jira Service Management
View your queues without losing sight of your navigation	You’ll be able to view your queues in the sidebar with the rest of your navigation items. Expand and collapse them as you need, and if you prefer to work with the sidebar collapsed, just pop your queues into your main work area.
Switch between related content with tabs	We’re consolidating some pages and introducing tabs. You’ll be able to switch between: Articles, Drafts, and Categories in Knowledge base Change calendar, Services, Alerts, and On-call in Operations Customers, Organizations, and Products in Directory
Access Operations from your sidebar	Respond to alerts and view other IT operations features without leaving the main navigation.

What to expect?

With strong adoption and positive feedback for the EAP and Beta phases, we’re accelerating our rollout strategy to efficiently bring the new navigation to all customers. Starting March 17, 2025, we’ll begin a phased rollout over the next few months for Standard, Premium, and Enterprise editions.

See the table below to know when you can expect the new navigation for your sites.

Note: The timelines are subject to change, and we’ll provide more details as the dates approach. Keep an eye on this page and check the public roadmap for the latest updates and more information on the new navigation.

Cohort	Timeline	Details
EAP and Beta participants	Ongoing	If you enrolled your site for new navigation during the EAP/Beta phase, the rollout process doesn’t impact you as we’ll not be disabling it for you and your users. You and users can continue the new navigation. We’ll remove the option to turn off the new navigation and enable the new navigation for all users on the site by mid-April 2025.
5% of sites on the Standard edition	17 March 2025	We’ll start the new navigation rollout for 5% of sites on the Standard edition. The sites are chosen randomly and your admins are notified about the changes to the products.
Free edition	17 March 2025	We’ll transition sites on the Free edition to the new navigation. Admins and users won’t be able to turn off the new navigation.
All sites for all editions have optional opt-in	Mid-April 2025	If you’re an admin of a site, you can turn on the new navigation: For just yourself For everyone on the site
Standard edition	Early to late April 2025	We’ll begin rolling out the new navigation to sites on the Standard edition in early April 2025. If you’re an admin, we’ll remove the option to turn off the new navigation and enable the new navigation for all users on the site. Your users can still turn off the new navigation only for themselves till the end of May 2025. This will not affect anyone else on the site.
Premium edition	Early to mid-May 2025	We’ll begin rolling out the new navigation to sites on the Premium edition in early May 2025. If you’re an admin, we’ll remove the option to turn off the new navigation and enable the new navigation for all users on the site. Your users can still turn off the new navigation only for themselves till mid-June 2025. This will not affect anyone else on the site.
Enterprise edition	Early to late June 2025	We’ll begin rolling out the new navigation to sites on the Enterprise edition in early June 2025. If you’re an admin, we’ll remove the option to turn off the new navigation and enable the new navigation for all users on the site. Your users can still turn off the new navigation only for themselves till July 2025. This will not affect anyone else on the site.
100% rollout	July 2025	All users of all editions are on the new navigation.

Admin controls for new navigation

We know that change can be challenging, and introducing new changes to your team needs planning. So to ensure you and your team are comfortable with the new navigation, we’re giving admins additional flexibility.

If you’re an admin:

• You can turn on the new navigation only for yourself

• You can turn on the new navigation for everyone on the site

Jira labs for admins

To access admin controls for new navigation:

1. From the top right corner, select Settings > General settings.

2. Go to Jira Labs to see the controls for New navigation.

As an admin, you can delay turning on the new navigation for everyone on your site for a few weeks before we enable it for everyone by default. After the new navigation has been turned on for everyone on the site, your users can still turn it on/off for a certain time (3-8 weeks) before the option is removed.

Additionally, for Sandbox environments, admins can now self-serve and choose to turn the new navigation on.

Jira labs for users

When your admin turns on the new navigation for your site, you can turn on/off the new navigation for a few weeks. This will only affect you and not all users on the site.

To turn on/off the new navigation:

1. From the top right corner, select Settings > General settings.

2. Under Jira Labs, you can toggle the switch on/off for New navigation.

Frequently asked questions

Questions	Answers
Can I turn off the new navigation?	Depending on the edition, users can temporarily turn off the new navigation. See the timelines above to find out how long this option will be available. If you’re from the below cohort, you cannot turn off the new navigation: Sites on the Free edition
How long will I have the option to turn off the new navigation?	The option to turn off the new navigation is based on your edition. See the timeline above to see when you won’t be able to switch between experiences anymore. For example, if you’re an admin of a site on the Standard edition, we’ll enable the new navigation for your site on 14 April 2025. You can delay turning on the new navigation for your users until 28 April 2025, after which we’ll enable it for you and your users by default. Your users can switch between the navigation experience until June 2025.
Why can’t I see the New navigation in Jira Labs for my site?	We have disabled the option to opt out for the below cohort: Sites on the Free edition Some sites on trial and new Jira sites are already on the new navigation. All sites on trial and new Jira sites will be moved to the new navigation by mid-June 2025.
Where can I find my project and board Settings?	We’ve moved Settings for projects and boards. Project settings  From the sidebar, select the More actions ( ) for Projects to access settings for all projects. From the sidebar, select the More actions ( ) menu next to the project name to access that particular project’s settings. Board settings From the sidebar, select the More actions ( ) menu next to the board name to access that particular board’s settings. From the project navigation, you can access the More actions ( ) menu for the project or board right next to its name.
Who is affected when I customize my sidebar?	From the sidebar, select Customize sidebar to personalize it according to your preference. Customizing the sidebar only affects you, not everyone else on the site. Note: Customizing the sidebar is different from customizing project tabs. If you’re an admin, customizing project tabs affects your whole team.
Who is affected by the customization at the project level?	As an admin, you can customize the project tabs at the project level. This affects the whole team.

In the meantime, join our focus group to stay updated, ask questions, raise concerns, and connect with the team working on the new navigation.

Regards,
The Atlassian navigation team

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @Varsha Patel - thanks for posting this here, although I think it would be useful to also post it in the New navigation forums which many of your EAP and Beta testers are following and have asked about updates to this very timeline.

(The last update on this topic I see from Atlassian in that forum is your Feb 13 post.)

Anyways, I found this very interesting:

All sites for all editions have optional opt-in

Mid-April 2025

If you’re an admin of a site, you can turn on the new navigation: For just yourself For everyone on the site

I feel like it would be more helpful to have an option to make it available (but not active) for everyone on the site, so that people can start playing with it BEFORE it is pushed upon them.

We would be able to put up a "New Jira Navigation is coming in May - try it out now!" with a link to documentation/videos (those are still coming right) as well as a link to the Settings Page where they can enable the feature.

This would go a LONG WAY in easing user anxiety about the new UI.

[Darryl Lee]

Also @Varsha Patel can you please clarify about Sandboxes? You wrote:

Additionally, for Sandbox environments, admins can now self-serve and choose to turn the new navigation on.

I do not have an option in our Sandbox to turn the new navigation on. 

I also don't see Sandbox in your rollout schedule, whereas previous rollout timelines estimated that "Opt in for all Sandboxes" would be available in

• March '25 (Feb, 14 2025 - Boise Atlassian Community YouTube webinar)
• Late March '25 (Mar 5, 2025 - Unpacking the new Atlassian global navigation experience | US webinar) 

I'm reading in various threads that users are able to ask Support for their sites' scheduled rollout date. I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient to publish this somewhere in the Admin interface? Or provide an API endpoint for it?

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks for the article @Varsha Patel 

Very valid points from @Darryl Lee 

I like the "All sites for all editions have optional opt-in" - but I am on the same page as Darryl. Changes like this should probably be made available before enforced. Even if it is communicated, giving end-users the power - as you have done for admins makes Atlassian tools all the more powerful! 

Thanks again

[Christian Peper]

Thanks for this status updated, exactly what I was looking for :D

[Varsha Patel]

@Darryl Lee and @Yatish Madhav

Re: More power to end-users
Based on our research with admins from late 2024 to early 2025, we found that managing bespoke workflows at the user level becomes increasingly challenging for admins of the organization. To address this, we're giving admins control over whether to move their users to the new navigation starting in mid-April 2025 before we enforce the transition as per our rollout.

[Carolyn Glendening]

@Varsha Patel thank you for the update. I must ask Atlassian (urgently): Where, oh where are the end-user ready demo videos, preferably a list of short, digestible demos of specific parts of the Jira (and Confluence) UI that we can point our users to? Screenshots are a basic start, but demos are a must!