Upgrade matrix

Upgrading Jira applications

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This upgrade matrix should serve as a starting point when researching which version of Jira Software and Jira Service Desk is right for your team. 

Here you'll find all of the supported versions including:


Long Term Support release

If you're only upgrading about once a year, Long Term Support releases are a good choice.

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Jira Software top features

Here's a summary of the great new features awaiting your users.

8.0
  • Jira Software mobile app (beta)
  • Batching email notificaitons to reduce the number of emails you're getting from Jira
  • New look and feel of Scrum/Kanban boards and backlogs
  • Performance improvements for backlogs
  • New priority icons
  • New JQL options: finding authors of updates, and finding link types
  • New configuration for MySQL 5.7 that allows 4-byte characters
  • Massive improvements to indexing
  • REST API for issue type schemes
Release notes
7.13

This is a Long Term Support release.

  • Support for OpenJDK 8.
Release notes
7.12
  • Custom fields optimizer (Data Center)
  • Sharing edit rights for filters and dashboards
  • New events in the audit log (filters and dashboards)
  • New look and feel of the custom fields page
  • Disabling Days in column time indicator to improve performance
  • New compression method (Google's Snappy) when copying the index between the nodes (Data Center)
Release notes
7.11
  • Support for IPv6
  • New columns on the Projects page (Issues, Last issue update)
  • Development information available in Basic Search
  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.29
Release notes
7.10
  • New look and feel for Jira, including the first wave of changes to the most frequently used pages.
  • Archiving inactive or completed projects (Data Center).
  • New events in the audit log.
  • Case-insensitive labels.
  • Quick start guide for Jira Data Center.
  • Sending Jira notifications to Stride rooms and conversations.
Release notes
7.9
  • Improved Kanban boards showing only recently modified issues in the Done column.
  • Searching through versions with a wildcard.
  • Choosing delimiters when exporting your issues to CSV.
  • Disabling empty JQL queries to avoid performance issues with empty filters.
  • New events in the audit log.
  • Asynchronous cache replication in Jira Data Center.
  • IPv6 support for MySQL databases.
Release notes
7.8
  • Quick search that shows instant results, and displays your recent work if you're not searching.
  • Dutch language pack.
Release notes
7.7
  • REST API to manage priority schemes outside of the user interface
  • Italian and Finnish language packs
Release notes
7.6

This is a Long Term Support release.

  • Project-specific priorities.
  • Live monitoring of your Jira instance with JMX.
  • Subtasks drag 'n' drop.
  • X-Frame-Options to prevent clickjacking.
Release notes
7.5
  • Improved Kanban backlog: versions and epics panels to let you better manage your releases.
  • Sprint goals: add goals to your sprints to let your team know what you want to achieve.
  • Renaming and deleting inactive or closed sprints.
  • Jira Software Data Center on Microsoft Azure.
  • Events for creating and deleting issue links.
  • Syntax highlighting for additional 25 languages.

  • New Czech, Estonian, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, and Polish language packs.

Release notes
7.4
  • Extended project-level administration.
    Project-level admins get more privileges when editing workflows and can also edit project's screens. You can also disable this feature.
  • Backlog for your Kanban projects.
  • Exporting issues to HTML.
  • In-app notifications to help you stay up-to-date with license renewals, new versions, and critical changes.
  • Garbage collection logs enabled by default to help you and our Support teams troubleshoot your issues.
Release notes
7.3
  • Project-level administration.
    Delegate some admin responsibilities to project-level admins, allowing them to edit workflows.
  • Rich text editing, or 'what you see is what you get'.
  • Single sign-on for Data Center, enabled by default.
  • Zero downtime upgrades for Data Center.
Release notes


Jira Service Desk top features

Here's a summary of the great new features awaiting your users.

4.0
  • Performance improvements for common tasks
  • New priority icons
  • New JQL options: finding authors of updates, and finding link types
  • New configuration for MySQL 5.7 that allows 4-byte characters
  • Massive improvements to indexing
Release notes
3.16

This is a Long Term Support release.

  • Support for OpenJDK 8
Release notes
3.15
  • Smart SLAs based on due dates
  • Custom fields optimizer (Data Center)
  • Sharing edit rights for filters and dashboards
  • New events in the audit log (filters and dashboards)
  • New look and feel of the custom fields page
Release notes
3.14
  • New look and feel for the most frequently used pages
  • Support for IPv6
  • Project archiving for Data Center
  • New columns on the Projects page (Issues, Last issue update)
  • Dutch added to languages available in Jira Service Desk
Release notes
3.13
  • New events in the audit log
Release notes
3.12
  • Approve requests from email
  • Searching versions with a wildcard
  • IPv6 support for MySQL databases
Release notes
3.11
  • Improved quick search
Release notes
3.10
  • Visibility on approvals
  • Disable account verification emails
Release notes
3.9

This is a Long Term Support release.

  • Project-specific priorities (from 3.9.4 only)
  • Better canned responses
  • Auto approvals
  • Live monitoring of your Jira instance with JMX
Release notes
3.8
  • Import SLAs
  • Events for linked issues
  • Syntax highlighting for 25 more languages
Release notes
3.7
  • Canned responses comes to Jira Service Desk
Release notes
3.6
  • Human readable SLA rendering 
  • Project level administration
  • Jira Service Desk Data Center Zero downtime upgrades
  • Improvements to issue export
  • In-app notifications
Release notes


Supported platform changes

From time to time we will add or end support for a platform. Here's a summary of the changes since Jira Software 7.3, and Jira Service Desk 3.3. 

8.0/4.0

Added support for:

  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.35 (replacing 8.5.32). Added in Jira 8.0.1.

Ended support for:

  • PostgreSQL 9.3
  • MySQL 5.5
Supported platforms
7.13/3.16

Added support for:

  • OpenJDK 8
Supported platforms
7.12/3.15

Added support for:

  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.32 (replacing 8.5.29)
Supported platforms
7.11/3.14

Added support for:

  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.29 (replacing 8.5.6)
Supported platforms
7.10/3.13No changes.Supported platforms
7.9/3.12

Added support for:

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2016
Supported platforms
7.8/3.11No changes.Supported platforms
7.7/3.10No changes.Supported platforms
7.6/3.9No changes.Supported platforms
7.5/3.8No changes.Supported platforms
7.4/3.7 and 3.6

Added support for:

  • PostgreSQL 9.6

Ended support for:

  • PostgreSQL 9.2
Supported platforms
7.3/3.5, 3.4, and 3.3

Added support for:

  • MySQL 5.7
  • PostgreSQL 9.5
  • Apache Tomcat 8.5.6 (replacing 8.0.33)
Supported platforms


Technical upgrade notes

This table is a high-level summary of the Jira Software (7.3 to 8.0), and Jira Service Desk (3.3 to 4.0) upgrade notes. You should read the full upgrade notes before upgrading. 

8.0/4.0

Important notes:

Index changes...
  • Incompatible index: Due to the upgrade of the library responsible for the Jira index, your current index will become incompatible. You'll need to create a new index by reindexing Jira after the upgrade.

  • Index location changes: Starting from Jira 8.0, the Jira index will be stored in a new location: <Jira-home-directory>/caches/indexesV1.

  • Automatic reindex: Because of the above changes, Jira will trigger an automatic reindex after the upgrade, which might mean you'll need to reindex twice following the upgrade. Since this might be really time-consuming for large Jira instances, you can disable the automatic reindex, and run it manually whenever you're ready.
Apps changes...
  • Incompatible apps: You'll need to disable all apps that are incompatible with the new version before the upgrade. Incompatible apps might block the upgrade or the Jira startup after the upgrade.
Other changes...
  • Reduced logging: Application log output (atlassian-jira.log) is no longer mirrored in the Tomcat log file, catalina.out, to preserve the disk space.

  • Jira needs more memory: We've increased the default heap size available to Jira to 2GB. Note that this change requires extra steps if you're using 32-bit systems.

  • Zero downtime upgrades: This upgrade method won't be available when upgrading from Jira 7.x to Jira 8.x. Once you're on Jira 8.x, you can use it to upgrade to any later version.
End of support...

In Jira Service Desk 4.0, we've removed com.atlassian.fugue, and updated our APIs to use Core Java Data types and Exceptions. We’ve introduced this change to make it easier to develop on Jira Service Desk.

What you'll need to do

Before using Core Java Data types and Exceptions, update any scripts, integrations, or apps that make requests to endpoints returning com.atlassian.fugue. This stops them breaking after the update.

Read our Java API docs and REST API docs to learn how.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.13/3.16

Important notes:

  • After upgrading Apache Tomcat to 8.5.32, we've added new properties to the server.xml file. Make sure you don't copy the old files to the new Jira version, but add the missing properties (or copy your customizations to the new file).
  • New properties, controlling the JVM code cache, have been added to the setenv.sh / .bat file.
  • Jira Service Desk 3.16 has deprecated the use of com.atlassian.fugue. In Jira Service Desk 4.0, we'll be permanently removing it and updating our APIs to use Core Java Data types and Exceptions instead.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.12/3.15

Important notes:

  • Jira Service Desk 3.15 has deprecated the use of com.atlassian.fugue. In Jira Service Desk 4.0, we'll be permanently removing it and updating our APIs to use Core Java Data types and Exceptions instead.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.11/3.14

Important notes:

  • We've upgraded Apache Tomcat to 8.5.29. There might be some changes to Tomcat config files, so make sure you don't copy the old files to the new Jira version. See upgrade notes for details.
  • We support IPv6, but recommend that you use the mixed mode (IPv4 + IPv6). If your systems are IPv6 only, with IPv4 disabled, some Jira features won't work.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.10/3.13No important changes.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.9/3.12

Important notes:

  • Jira Data Center changes cache replication to asynchronous. No immediate actions are required, but make sure you read about this change, and check whether you need to provide extra disk space in the local home directory on each node.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.8/3.11

Important notes:

  • Oracle JDBC driver is no longer shipped with Jira. You'll need to download it from the Oracle website, and copy to your Jira installation directory (/lib).

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.7/3.10

Important notes:

  • Oracle JDBC driver is no longer shipped with Jira. You'll need to download it from the Oracle website, and copy to your Jira installation directory (/lib).
  • Account verification emails are sent out to Jira Service Desk customers when requests are raised by email. After the upgrade, project administrators can disable these account verification emails.

Known issues:

  • A fix for duplicated job IDs requires extra steps in some instances, just to be sure (checking the database if the index was created; restarting your Jira instance.)

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.6/3.9

Important notes:

  • Priority schemes (UI changes). We've made significant changes to how priorities are managed in Jira, but these changes are only available from Jira Service Desk 3.9.4.
  • We're no longer shipping the Oracle JDBC driver with Jira. You'll need to download it from the Oracle site and move to the /lib directory in the Jira installation directory.

Known issues:

  • A fix for duplicated job IDs requires extra steps in some instances, just to be sure (checking the database if the index was created; restarting your Jira instance.)

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.5/3.8

Important notes:

  • New JDBC driver for Microsoft SQL Server requires a new URL. If you didn't modify the original URL, you can fix it with Jira configuration tool. If you customized the URL, you might need to change it manually.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk upgrade notes

7.4/3.7, and 3.6

Important notes:

  • New options added to the startup files to enable garbage collection. Just a heads up, no actions required.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk 3.7 upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk 3.6 upgrade notes

7.3/3.5, 3.4, and 3.3

Important notes:

  • If you're planning to use MySQL 5.7.6 or later, you'll need to grant your database user an extra permission (REFERENCE).
  • If you're running Jira over SSL, you'll need to update your server.xml with the correct protocol because of the Apache Tomcat upgrade.
  • We've disabled automatic XML backups. Use your native database tools to create a backup.

Jira Software upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk 3.5 upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk 3.4 upgrade notes

Jira Service Desk 3.3 upgrade notes


All ready?

Head back to the landing page, and choose your upgrade method or see our nifty upgrade checklist.

Go to landing page

Last modified on Jun 26, 2020

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