From stable to unshakeable: announcing upcoming major releases for Atlassian Data Center

Jira Development Jira Data Center
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Hi Data Center Community,

We’re excited to announce the next major versions of Atlassian Data Center products. We’re making further investments to help ensure your self-managed environments stay secure, reliable, and easy to operate. Building on the work we did for previous major upgrades, these upcoming changes will sit underneath:

  • Jira Software 12
  • Jira Service Management 12
  • Confluence 11
  • Bitbucket 11
  • Bamboo 13
  • Crowd 8

This work is now in the scoping and planning phase. We’ll share more details and timelines as soon as they’re available, and individual product teams will communicate specific changes, release plans, and upgrade guidance.

Scope at a glance

Stronger security by design

The upcoming changes share a united goal: meet and maintain a strong security posture. To achieve this, we are:

  • Tightening how Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) is used and configured to close off types of historical vulnerabilities.
  • Strengthening protections against Server‑Side Request Forgery (SSRF) across the stack.
  • Upgrading and hardening core HTTP client libraries.
  • Moving to Jackson v3 for JSON processing.

Infrastructure updates

We’re making significant updates to our core technology stack, including:

  • Upgrading to Spring 7 and Jakarta 11
  • Adding support for Java 25 and removing support for Java 21
  • Upgrading to React 19
  • Upgrading to jQuery 4

How these changes help you

  • Modernize core components by updating the underlying libraries and frameworks to supported versions that follow today’s security best practices.
  • Make it faster to ship security fixes quickly and consistently across products that share the same foundations.
  • Reduce reliance on legacy or hard‑to‑upgrade pieces of the stack, which often show up in customer security scans and audits.
  • Provide a stronger secure‑by‑default baseline when you upgrade to the next major versions.
  • Reduce surprises where older, forked, or out‑of‑support libraries become a long‑term risk.
  • Clarify communication about which APIs and components are supported, so you can make informed decisions about customisations and apps.

Impact for admins and partners

Because all Data Center Products are seeing major upgrades, some breaking changes, especially for apps and custom integrations, are expected:

  • Admins:
    • You’ll adopt these shared changes by upgrading to product versions built on them.
    • We’ll provide detailed upgrade and compatibility notes so you can test in non‑production first.
  • Marketplace partners and custom app developers:
    • Some APIs and dependencies will change, and certain deprecated or unsafe patterns might be removed.
    • We’ll share early access builds and migration guidance so you can validate and adapt your apps before GA.

We’ll keep you informed about these changes so you can plan your testing and rollout with confidence.

Next Steps

The next major versions are currently in the scoping and planning phase. We’ll provide:

  • Early access and evaluation builds of the next Data Center product versions ahead of general availability.
  • Documentation and checklists to help you validate security, reliability, and app compatibility in your environment.
  • Follow‑up Community posts and changelogs to outline specific product versions, timelines, and breaking changes as they’re finalized. Visit Atlassian developer changelog

The major upgrades require careful planning and collaboration. We’re committed to keeping you informed throughout the process and ensuring your self-managed environment stays secure, reliable, and supported.

What you can do now

  • Stay informed and watch for upcoming early access releases and detailed migration guides.
  • Get involved, test the new builds in your staging environments, and share your feedback with us.
  • Prepare your teams and review your current integrations and customizations to anticipate any required updates.

Let us know what you think

Your input is invaluable as we finalize all the changes and shape the future of Atlassian Data Center. Please share your questions, concerns, or suggestions in the comments below or reach out through your usual support channels.

Thank you for being part of our community and for your ongoing partnership as we continue to raise the bar for security and reliability together.

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Thank you for posting this information @AnnaScisowska!

I look forward to seeing when provide more details about which APIs and dependencies you plan to change, and deprecations that you wish to remove. Detailed guides and insights in md file formats have been useful in the past. We would also welcome example / reference implementations of apps that respect the new API standard as part of your information sharing.

Also, I hope you are very soon able to provide us rough timelines of the planned EAP, beta and release schedules for this year’s platform 9. If you keep on the same pattern as the last two major platform updates, we can expect Confluence 11 and Crowd 8 to be released in July, Jira 12 in August, Bitbucket in September and Bamboo some time later during the autumn. Do you think that this year’s upgrades is likely to follow the same pattern, or can we expect an altogether different release schedule? From the look of it, your planning phase is somewhat delayed compared to previous years when we already had announcements and details in December the year preceding releases. I would hope that this delay is also reflected in the release dates and EAP periods.

As I am sure you have received feedback on during multiple occasions, releasing major versions during summer break is not ideal for us as third parties. In my company’s case, releases later during autumn (Oct/Nov) would be much better and give us time to properly test before achieving compatibility. Thanks again for posting this announcement.

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