Liferay Upgrade Planner
Plan a Liferay upgrade from 6.2 or 7.x to DXP 2025.Q1 or 2026.Q1 LTS: breaking changes (incl. Jakarta EE), JDK, Tomcat and search requirements, and the database upgrade commands.
Choose your upgrade path
Liferay 7.0 → Liferay 7.1
(4 steps)More configuration is exposed as typed OSGi configuration in System Settings / Instance Settings. Review portal-ext.properties for keys that are now managed in the UI or via .config files.
OSGi Config GeneratorThe Lexicon/Clay component set is the standard for 7.1 UI. AlloyUI is on the way out — start migrating custom widgets toward Clay markup and tags.
Compile your modules against 7.1 and address deprecation warnings now; several 7.0-deprecated methods are removed in later releases.
Liferay 7.1 supports Elasticsearch 6.1–6.8 (and Elasticsearch 7 through the Liferay Connector to Elasticsearch 7 on later patches). Elasticsearch 2.x from early 7.0 is not supported.
Liferay 7.1 → Liferay 7.2
(3 steps)Update the liferay.workspace.target.platform.version in gradle.properties so BOM-managed dependency versions resolve against 7.2.
liferay.workspace.target.platform.version=7.2.1-1
Methods deprecated back in 7.0/7.1 are removed in 7.2. Rebuild every module against the 7.2 target platform and fix any unresolved references.
Liferay 7.2 supports Elasticsearch 6.5–6.8, and Elasticsearch 7 through the Elasticsearch 7 connector depending on patch level. Confirm your cluster matches before upgrading.
Liferay 7.2 → Liferay 7.3
(3 steps)Several core apps were rewritten on React with Clay 3. If you customized their JSPs or markup, re-validate those customizations against the new front end.
Liferay 7.3 dropped Elasticsearch 6. Provision an Elasticsearch 7.9–7.17 cluster (later 7.3 updates also support 8.x) and reconnect the search connector.
7.3 supports both JDK 8 and JDK 11. If you plan to move to JDK 11, test module compilation and any reflection-heavy code under it now.
Database upgrade: Liferay 7.0 → Liferay 7.3
(7 steps)You do not install each version in between. The upgrade tool of the target release runs every upgrade step from your current schema in one go. The sections above list what changed along the way, so your code, themes and environment are ready for the target.
Take a full backup of the database, the Document Library store and [Liferay Home]/data. Run the upgrade on a copy of production first and time it. If an attempt fails, restore the backup instead of retrying on the same database.
Removing unused instances, sites, pages and old content versions can cut upgrade time considerably. Tune the database for a write-heavy batch and enable batch inserts in the upgrade tool.
With the old server stopped and the new bundle configured against the database copy, run the upgrade client from [Liferay Home]/tools/portal-tools-db-upgrade-client. The default heap is 4 GB; give it more for databases over 10 GB, then read the upgrade report for errors.
cd [Liferay Home]/tools/portal-tools-db-upgrade-client ./db_upgrade.sh -j "-Xmx8192m"
If the report shows modules that did not finish, check and run their upgrade processes from Gogo Shell before allowing traffic.
upgrade:check upgrade:executeAll
Auto upgrade on startup is handy for local and test copies, but if you used it, remove upgrade.database.auto.run or set it to false before going live.
After the upgrade, reindex all search indexes from Control Panel → Search so content is searchable again.
How to read this plan: the numbered sections list what changed in each release between your version and the target, so you can update code, themes and the environment in one go. The database is upgraded once at the end, straight to the target. Requirements were checked against Liferay's compatibility matrices and releases.json on 2026-10-12; confirm them for your exact patch level.
Upgrading Liferay 7.0 to Liferay 7.3
This plan covers the changes in 3 releases between Liferay 7.0 and Liferay 7.3, then one database upgrade, 17 steps in total. You don't install the versions in between: update your code, themes and environment for every change listed, then run the Liferay 7.3 upgrade tool once against a backup of your database.
Releases in this path
- Liferay 7.0 → Liferay 7.1 — 4 steps
- Liferay 7.1 → Liferay 7.2 — 3 steps
- Liferay 7.2 → Liferay 7.3 — 3 steps
Before you start
- Back up the database and the Document Library, and test the upgrade on a copy of production first.
- Patch your current version to its latest fix pack before beginning.
- Confirm JDK, app server and search engine requirements for your exact Liferay 7.3 patch level. This plan was checked against Liferay's compatibility matrices on 2026-10-12.