Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 8.9. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 8.9 release notes.

Upgrade notes

Possible port conflict with Hazelcast upgrade

This release contains an upgrade to Hazelcast IMDG 5.3.6. This recent upgrade enhances our platform by improving JMX metrics for more efficient garbage collector operations, and optimized memory consumption. This version does not support rolling upgrades (ZDU).

Some customers who use Windows may experience a conflict between Confluence and Active Directory (dns.exe) both trying to use port 54327. If this happens, exclude the port from the port range.

Follow the steps on our troubleshooting page for full details.

Updated editor color palettes

In preparation for the release of dark theme, we’ve updated the text color and table cell background color palettes to use design tokens. These updated palettes now use colors that also improve accessibility contrast.

As a result of this change, once dark theme is released in the coming months, all colors in the editor will be converted to match the updated color palettes. That means you will no longer be able to customize these palettes using the temporary workaround.

Advance notice: take a peek!

OpenSearch opt-in feature ready for early access

We’re working to introduce OpenSearch as an opt-in search engine in an upcoming feature release of Confluence 9.x. It will not be part of Confluence 9.0. This will provide more advanced indexing options leading to less processing requirements and faster search results.

As part of our Early Access Program (EAP), we’ve updated the OpenSearch upgrade guide, to include links to new content on how to set up OpenSearch, and information on what's currently working and what we're still working on, should you wish to test during the EAP phase. At this early stage, OpenSearch during EAP is not suitable for production environments, but we invite you to try it on your testing environment.

Contact us on osfc@atlassian.com, or via our customer support channel.

Dark theme for Confluence

As we’re approaching the release of dark theme in Confluence 9.0, you can now get a first glimpse by enabling the theme.switcher dark feature. Bear in mind that we’re still working on finishing touches before the official release, and switching on the dark feature will enable dark theme for all users. We encourage you to try it in your staging environment, and let us know your feedback here.

Get ready for Confluence 9.0

We’re working on a major platform release with Confluence 9.0, due to be released mid year. Confluence 9.0 will have a number of upgrades. For early information, visit our Preparing for Confluence 9.0 page.

Supported platforms changes

End of support for PostgreSQL 12

As previously announced, PostgreSQL 12 is no longer supported.

End of support announcements.

Advance Notice: End of support for Java 11

• Confluence 8.9 will be the last release to support Java 11.
• Java 11 will not be supported in Confluence 9.0 and later versions.

For more information on these notices, see our End of Support Announcements for Confluence.

Changes to Security Bug Fix Policy

We’ve updated the Atlassian Security Bug Fix Policy. Changes took effect across all Data Center products on March 15, 2024. Previously, we delivered bug fix releases for any supported Long Term Support release in accordance with the Atlassian Support End-of-Life Policy, and for all product versions that are no older than 6 months.

With our new policy, we will continue to deliver a bug fix release for any supported Long Term Support release in accordance with the Atlassian Support End-of-Life Policy, but we are updating our policy to only support the most recently shipped feature release.

Infrastructure changes 

Head to Preparing for Confluence 8.9 to find out more about changes under the hood. 

Known issues

• There are a number of known issues when upgrading Confluence on specific database versions. See Confluence 7.11 upgrade notes if you are upgrading from Confluence 7.10 or earlier.
• If you are upgrading from Confluence 6.3 or earlier, there's a known issue where spaces do not appear in the space directory. You'll need to reindex your site after upgrading to fix this. 
• If you use Apache to limit who can access the admin console, you should update your configuration. See Using Apache to limit access to the Confluence administration interface for our suggested configuration.
• There is a known issue where read-only mode attempts to write to <shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml , but the file doesn't exist in the shared home directory. This problem affects sites that have been previously upgraded from Confluence 6.0 or earlier. See Could not save access.mode into the shared confluence.cfg.xml file error after upgrading to Confluence Data Center 6.10
• There is a known issue where some fonts that Confluence relies on are not available in older Linux distributions. See Confluence UI shows garbled or corrupt text on CAPTCHA, macros, and/or diagrams due to missing fonts
• There is a known issue where Confluence 8.8.0 and 8.8.1, upon upgrade from earlier versions, will fail to render the login page for instances using custom layout decorators. The decorators could be using the resource, ./langmacro.vm, which is no longer included in Confluence 8.8 (and later). See After Upgrade , error encountered - ResourceNotFoundException: Unable to find resource '/langmacro.vm' for more information.

If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and can't solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.

Upgrade procedure

Always test the upgrade in a test environment before upgrading in production.

To upgrade Confluence to the latest version:

1. Go to Administration  > General Configuration > Plan your upgrade and select the version you want to upgrade to. This will run the pre-upgrade checks.
2. Go to Administration  > General Configuration > Troubleshooting and support tools to check your license validity, application server, database setup, and more.
3. If your version of Confluence is more than one version behind, read the release notes and upgrade guides  for all releases between your version and the latest version.
4. Back up your installation directory, home directory, and database.
5. Download the latest version of Confluence.
6. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Update configuration files after upgrading

The contents of configuration files such as server.xml, web.xml , setenv.bat / setenv.sh, and confluenceinit.properties change from time to time. 

When upgrading, we recommend manually reapplying any additions to these files (such as proxy configuration, datasource, JVM parameters) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation; otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.