Delete a label in Jira

Platform Notice: Cloud, Server, and Data Center - This article applies equally to all platforms.

Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Summary

Labels can't be deleted from Jira via UI and/or database, but you can completely remove labels from your instance.

Bulk edit issues to remove Labels

To completely delete a label from a Jira instance, it must simply be removed from all the issues where it is used.

You can use Bulk action and select Change Labels (step 3 of Bulk action) with Find and remove these to only remove certain labels from the issues.

Once the label is removed from all issues, it will no longer be seen when browsing it.

However, the deleted label might still show up on the browser immediately after deleting it from all issues. If that's the case, it might be caused by index/cache replication that eventually becomes consistent, or the browser cache would need to be flushed and reloaded.

Please note that, if you don't have permission across all issues on Jira, you might miss some issues containing the label, which will impact the label not being removed. It's recommended that a user with administrative privileges (Managing global permissions - Jira DC | Manage global permissions - Jira Cloud) perform this action as this user will have complete visibility of Jira issues.

Feature Requests

Both Cloud and Data Center application users can watch the following feature requests for improved label management in Jira applications:

Last modified on Feb 7, 2025

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