I’m from the Design System team 
Thank you for the detailed feedback and the comparison screenshots. It’s very helpful to see how these changes affect your app’s UX.
To answer your questions directly: the change you are seeing is an intentional part of the Visual Refresh mentioned in this announcement.
- Why the change? (visual hierarchy)
This shift is driven by a new approach to visual hierarchy across Atlassian products. We want to ensure that “Status” (represented by Lozenges) remains the most prominent element on a page.
In this new iteration, we have actually removed the “subtle” (non-bold) lozenge style so that all lozenges remain bold and filled for maximum visibility. By moving Tags to an outlined style, we reduce visual noise and prevent categorization elements from competing for attention with critical status information
- Tags vs. Lozenges
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Use
<Tag>for Categorization: If your “PHP” and “Java” labels are used for categorization (labels, metadata, etc.), then<Tag>is still the correct component to use, even in its new outlined form. -
The “filled” look: There is currently no “filled” option planned for the new Tag component. If you require high visual prominence for something that behaves more like a status or a high-priority state, you might consider the bold lozenge. However, for general categorization, we recommend sticking with the Tag to stay aligned with the host product’s evolving language.
As @stephenmok mentioned, we are working on the next iteration of improvements for each of our labeling components. We’d love to have you take a deeper look at our Early Access Program (EAP) documentation on atlassian.design. It covers these visual refresh principles in detail and explains how Tag, Lozenge, and Badge are being streamlined for better semantic consistency:
We appreciate you being a part of this transition. If you have further thoughts on how this affects your specific categorization use case, we’re all ears!
Cheers,
Meng