Summary

Jira Cloud does not natively offer an SQL query to delete issues directly from the database, as this could potentially corrupt your data.

The below steps assume that you want to permanently remove issues from Jira that are no longer required. We recommend to backup your issues before performing the below operations. See Export data from Jira Cloud

Solution

Here are a few ways to remove a large amount of issues from Jira.

Jira UI

This bulk operation allows you to delete up to 1000 issues at a time. 

1. Perform a search with the required filters to produce a list of issues.
2. Select ... to the right of the screen > Select Bulk change issues
3. Select the issues you'd like to perform the bulk operation on and select Next at the bottom of the list.
4. Select Delete Issues and then select Next.
5. If available, decide whether you'd like to send email notifications. Select Next.
6. Review your bulk operation, and select Confirm when you are happy with the selections.

REST API

You can build a script that will run the REST API that is mentioned on the Developer API page to delete multiple issues all at once. Here is an example of a curl request using the delete API endpoint.

curl --request DELETE \
  --url 'https://your-domain.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/{issueIdOrKey}' \
  --user 'email@example.com:<api_token>'

Third-party app

Mass Delete for Jira makes the removal of large numbers of Jira issues easy. Unlike the bulk delete functionality provided by Jira, this app has no limit on the number of issues that can be removed at a time.