Jira Cloud to reject user-property JQL on voters, watchers, creators

Jira Cloud to reject user-property JQL on voters, watchers, creators

7 October 2026: Atlassian is deprecating Jira Cloud JQL searches that use user entity properties on the voter, watcher and creator fields. From 16 November 2026 such queries, and API requests that contain them, will be rejected with an UnsupportedOperationException instead of returning results.

Not yet independently verified. The changelog calls 16 November 2026 the deprecation date and mentions a removal date without giving a separate one, so we have treated 16 November as the cut-off. We have not tested which queries are affected. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The notice appeared in the Jira Cloud platform changelog on 7 October 2026. Searches that use user entity properties on the assignee and reporter fields are not affected: the changelog says they remain fully supported.

The people most likely to meet the change are the ones who never wrote the query. Marketplace apps and in-house integrations sometimes store a value against a user, such as a team, a region or a cost centre, and then filter issues by that property on the person who created, watches or voted for them. Saved filters, dashboards and automation rules built on those apps would break on the cut-off date, and so would any script that sends the JQL through the REST API.

Atlassian asks teams to review their apps and integrations and move the data to one of three places. Custom fields suit data that has to stay searchable through core JQL. Issue entity properties suit data scoped to a single issue. App-managed storage suits data that belongs to an app and does not need native JQL support.

Our issue tracking software category lists five products and our project management software category lists 17.

A day earlier, on 6 October, the changelog recorded a different change. Text queries that use =, IN or NOT IN now perform an exact phrase search, so a query for urgent matches an issue containing "urgent issue" or "very urgent issue" rather than only a field that holds the single word. Phrases must appear in the same word order, and matching stays case-insensitive and stemmed. Atlassian suggests reviewing saved filters, dashboard gadgets and automation rules that use these operators, because they may now return more results, and using the ~ operator when word order does not matter.

Company profile on TrustList: Atlassian

Related on TrustList:

• Atlassian fixes critical file-read flaw in its Data Center products

Sources

• Atlassian Developer: Jira Cloud platform changelog, 7 October 2026 entry on deprecating user entity property searches, 7 October 2026