Liferay Upgrade Planner

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.

7.4 consolidated many apps and introduced Objects and an expanded headless API. Recompile all modules against the 7.4 target platform and review any custom entities that overlap with Objects.

More legacy properties were removed or moved to OSGi configuration in 7.4. Diff your portal-ext.properties against the 7.4 defaults and migrate anything that no longer applies.

APIs deprecated across the 7.x line are removed in 7.4. Rebuild and fix any remaining references before deploying.

Liferay 7.4 runs on JDK 8 and JDK 11. Standardize your build and runtime on JDK 11 now, because the quarterly releases remove JDK 8 and move on to JDK 17 and 21.

Liferay 7.4 supports Elasticsearch 7.14–7.17, and Elasticsearch 8.8+ on later updates (DXP U81+, CE GA102+). Elasticsearch 7 is end of life, so moving to 8.x now saves a step later.

DXP Quarterly releases (2024.Q1 onward) replace 7.4 updates with cumulative quarterly releases. The Q1 release each year is the Long-Term Support (LTS) release; the other quarters have shorter support, so most teams target the latest LTS.

Set liferay.workspace.product to a quarterly releaseKey from releases.liferay.com/releases.json so the bundle and BOM resolve against that release.

liferay.workspace.product=dxp-2024.q1.31

JDK 11 is deprecated in 2024.Q1, and 2024.Q2 and later certify JDK 17 and 21 and remove JDK 8. Move your runtime and builds to JDK 17 or, better, JDK 21.

2024 quarterly releases support Elasticsearch 7.17 and 8.8–8.19 through the bundled connector. Production must use a remote cluster.

2025.Q1 is a Long-Term Support release. Upgrade to its latest patch (for example 2025.Q1.28 LTS) rather than a Q2–Q4 release if you want the longest support window.

Point the Workspace at the 2025.Q1 LTS release, rebuild every module and fix compile errors from APIs removed since 2024.

liferay.workspace.product=dxp-2025.q1.28-lts

2025.Q1 certifies JDK 17 and JDK 21, with JDK 21 recommended. JDK 8 and 11 are no longer supported. Tomcat 9.0 is the certified Tomcat line.

2025.Q1 supports Elasticsearch 7.17 and 8.8–8.19, and adds OpenSearch 2 through the Liferay Connector to OpenSearch 2 from Marketplace (GA with OpenSearch 2.19 from 2025.Q1.23). Elasticsearch 7 is end of life and deprecated from 2025.Q2, so move to 8.19 or OpenSearch now.

2025.Q1 adds MySQL 8.4 and supports PostgreSQL 12–16. If you are still on MySQL 5.7, plan the move to 8.x now, because later releases deprecate it.

From 2026.Q1, Liferay ships one platform instead of separate Community Edition and DXP bundles. Community users get a free Activation Key (the Free Tier), and a subscription key can be added later without reinstalling. CE 7.4 GA users upgrade to this platform too.

Since 2025.Q3, Liferay runs on Jakarta EE 10, so 2026.Q1 is the first LTS where every javax.servlet, javax.portlet and similar import must become jakarta.*. Update the Workspace Gradle plugin to 14.0.0+ (17.1.7+ for matched Jakarta dependencies), run the upgradeJakarta task in each project, then review what it missed. Portlets move to Portlet 4.0.

# settings.gradle: com.liferay.gradle.plugins.workspace 14.0.0 or newer
# gradle.properties:
liferay.workspace.product=dxp-2026.q1.13-lts

# In each project:
blade gw upgradeJakarta

Add javaEEPackage: "jakarta" to each rest-config.yaml and regenerate the REST code.

# rest-config.yaml
javaEEPackage: "jakarta"

blade gw buildREST

Libraries you embed or deploy that use javax APIs need Jakarta versions (for example log4j-web becomes log4j-jakarta-web). Transforming jars with the Eclipse Transformer works but Liferay does not support applications built that way.

MySQL 5.7 and PostgreSQL 12 and 13 are deprecated in 2026.Q1. Use MySQL 8.0/8.4 or PostgreSQL 14–17.

2026.Q1 is certified only on Jakarta app servers: Apache Tomcat 10.1, JBoss EAP 8, Oracle WebLogic 15c and WildFly 30. Tomcat 9 does not run it. Start from the new bundle and carry your configuration over.

JDK 21 is the certified runtime for 2026.Q1. JDK 17 still works but is deprecated.

2026.Q1 ships a native Elasticsearch 8 connector that replaces the Elasticsearch 7 connector, and supports Elasticsearch 8.19.x. OpenSearch 2.19 is supported through the OpenSearch 2 connector 2.0.0 (GA from 2026.Q1.6). Elasticsearch 7 is not supported.