What's new in Grafana v11 on Grafana Labs

What's new in Grafana v11.6

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.6

Welcome to Grafana 11.6! This minor release includes a number of dashboarding features that are now generally available including one-click data links and actions, Cron syntax support for annotations, and WebGL-powered geomaps for better performance. We’ve also fully migrated from API keys to service accounts in Grafana for better security. Read on to learn more about version history for Grafana Managed Alerts, label-based access control (LBAC) for Mimir metrics, and more in Grafana v11.6.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.6, check out our Upgrade Guide.

What's new in Grafana v11.5

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.5

Welcome to Grafana 11.5! Read on to learn about new sharing, reporting, and export options, cross-cluster search for Elasticsearch, PDC support for several new data sources, and more. The Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant is in public preview and now supports all plugins and Grafana Alerts, in addition to dashboards, folders, and data sources. We’ve also made it more secure to run third-party apps and data sources, and improved user session handling for OAuth 2.0 and SAML.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.5, check out our Upgrade Guide.

What's new in Grafana v11.4

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.4

Welcome to Grafana 11.4! This is a special release with one new feature, created in partnership with AWS. We’ve made improvements to Cloudwatch so you can query your logs using two additional query languages: Opensearch PPL and Opensearch SQL. We’ve also updated the querying experience by providing a sample of commonly-used queries, syntax highlighting in the query editor, and auto-completion suggestions for complex queries. Read on to learn more about this new feature.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.4, check out our Upgrade Guide.

Query Cloudwatch Logs Insights with PPL and SQL

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

The AWS CloudWatch data source plugin now offers two new query languages for searching through logs: OpenSearch PPL and OpenSearch SQL. You now have increased flexibility to choose a more familiar query language and to take advantage of their unique features (like the SQL JOIN command) when querying AWS CloudWatch Logs Insights. In addition to the already supported Logs Insights QL option, you can find the added query language options in the new Query language drop-down list.

We’ve also updated the query editor to support syntax highlighting and to provide suggestions while you type, which simplifies writing complex queries. When you select log groups, the suggestions also include discovered fields.

Not sure where to start? We’ve also updated our CloudWatch Logs cheat sheet with the most commonly used queries so you can paste and customize to fit exactly what you need. Clicking on any of the example queries prefills the query input field.

For the complete list of commands supported for OpenSearch PPL and SQL, refer to the Cloudwatch Logs Insights documentation.

What's new in Grafana v11.3

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.3

Welcome to Grafana 11.3! Scenes-powered dashboards are now generally available and the Explore Logs plugin is now installed by default. The dashboard experience has also improved in other ways including the ability to trigger API calls from any canvas element with the new Actions option and an update to transformations so you can apply calculations to dynamic fields. We’ve also simplified the alert setup experience, added customizable announcement banners that admins can send to all users, and improved some default permissions.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.3, check out our Upgrade Guide.

Scenes-powered Dashboards are generally available

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

For the past few months we’ve been working on a major update of our Dashboards architecture and migrated it to the Scenes library. This migration provides us with more stable, dynamic, and flexible dashboards as well as setting the foundation for what we envision the future of Grafana dashboards will be. Here are four of the improvements that are being introduced as part of this work:

View mode and Edit mode

It can be difficult to efficiently navigate through the visually cluttered options during the dashboard editing process. When in View mode, the dashboard screen is less clutteed. In Edit mode, options like adding a panel and changing settings are easier to access.

Template variables and the time range picker remain visible as your scroll

The time picker is now the dashboard canvas rather than the toolbar, and now, together with template variables, it will stick to the top as you scroll through your dashboard. This is a highly requested feature that we’re very happy to be able to roll out!

Timezone parameter in Grafana URL

We’ve added a new time zone URL parameter, tz. This allows sharing dashboards with a selected time zone, ensuring that the receiver views it in the intended time zone regardless of their local settings.

Kiosk mode displays dashboard controls

When playing a playlist or displaying a dashboard in full screen, you can see controls by default. These controls include the time range picker, refresh button, variables, annotations, and links.

If you prefer to hide these controls during playlist playback, new configuration options are available when starting a playlist. You can choose which controls to display while the playlist is running.

For configuring controls outside of playlist playback, you can use the following URL parameters:

_dash.hideTimePicker: Hides the time and refresh picker
_dash.hideVariables: Hides variables and annotations controls
_dash.hideLinks: Hides dashboard links

Known limitations

The variable usage check is not yet available.
Editing a panel:
- The Library panels tab is not available anymore. You can replace a library panel from the panel menu.
- The Overrides tab is not in panel options (coming in Grafana v11.3.0). Overrides are shown at the bottom of the option list.
- The drop-down menu to collapse the visualization picker is missing (coming in Grafana v11.3.0).
The Share button is not visible when edit mode is enabled (coming in Grafana v11.3.0).

If you want to learn more, in detail, about all the improvements we’ve made, don’t miss our blog post.

Documentation

Additional dashboard and visualization improvements

Auto-formatted table cell values in Cell Inspect

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

We’ve improved the inspect value experience in table visualizations with the addition of tabs in the Inspect value drawer: Plain text and Code editor.

When the Cell inspect value switch is toggled on, clicking the inspect icon in a cell opens the drawer. Grafana attempts to automatically detect the type of data in the cell and opens the drawer with the associated tab showing. However, you can switch back and forth between tabs.

Documentation

Canvas actions

Experimental in all editions of Grafana

We’ve updated canvas visualizations so that now you can add actions to canvas elements, like opening an issue in GitHub or calling any API. The Selected element configuration now includes a Data links and actions section where you can add actions to elements. Each action can be configured to call an API endpoint.

Actions can also be configured to be triggered with a single click. To enable this functionality, select Action under the one One-click section in the Selected element data links and actions option. If there are multiple actions for an element, the first action in the list has the one-click functionality.

Also, we’ve also added the ability to control the order in which actions are displayed in the tooltip by dragging and dropping them.

To try out this feature, enable the vizActions feature toggle.

Legend support in bar gauge visualizations

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

We’ve added legend support to bar gauge visualizations. This is part an effort to standardize legends and make them available across more panels. You can customize legends by navigating to the Legend section in panel options. By default, the legend is disabled.

You can also hide names in each bar gauge, since they are redundant to the legend. To do that, in the Name placement option, choose Hidden.

Documentation

Apply the same binary transformation to all the number fields in a given table at once

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

When you set up a binary operation using the Add field from calculation transformation (for example, dividing each column by a certain value), there’s a new All number fields option available to select. Use this to apply a mathematical operator to multiple number fields simultaneously. This feature is particularly useful when you’re scaling or offsetting data containing multiple, dynamically-named fields, allowing the transformation to be applied when dealing with unknown field names.

Documentation

Actions for visualizations

Experimental in all editions of Grafana

We’ve updated several visualizations so that now you can add actions to them. The panel configuration now includes a Data links and actions section where you can add actions that can each be configured to call an API endpoint.

Also, we’ve also added the ability to control the order in which actions are displayed in the tooltip by dragging and dropping them.

This functionality has been added for the following visualizations:

Bar chart
Candlestick
Heatmap
State timeline
Status history
Time series
Trend
XY chart

To try out this feature, enable the vizActions feature toggle.

Explore Logs

The Explore Logs plugin is installed by default

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

With Explore Logs you can visualize and explore your logs to troubleshoot without having to write queries. It is easy to find spikes in your log volume, filter your logs and pinpoint problematic log lines.

While Explore Logs is GA in cloud and installed there by default already, with Grafana v11.3.0 it will be automatically installed on your Open Source or Enterprise instance as well. This will let you use Explore Logs alongside Explore Metrics without needing to install it manually.

This is configured by the preinstall configuration parameter in your Grafana configuration. For more information about Explore logs, refer to the documentation.

Correlations

Add correlations to external URLs in Explore

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Correlations is a feature that allows Grafana users to set up links between their data sources. Previously, the link generated would only be from one query to another—meaning results from a query could only generate links to open a second Explore pane with other query results.

With this feature, users can now link to third party web-based software based on their search results. The format follows the standard Grafana format for using variables.

Documentation

Alerting

Simplified query section for alert rule creation

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Use a simplified version of the query and alert conditions step to create Grafana-managed alert rules. The default options streamline rule creation with a cleaner header and a single query and condition. For more complex rules, switch to advanced options to add multiple queries and expressions.

This feature is rolling out to Grafana Cloud over the next couple of weeks.

Grafana Enterprise and OSS:

To use this feature, enable the alertingQueryAndExpressionsStepMode feature toggle.

Documentation

Role-based access control for notifications in Alerting

Available in public preview in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud

Manage contact points, mute timings, and notification templates through Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). Choose who can create, edit, and read contact points, mute timings, and notification templates using permissions or fixed roles.

For mute timings and notification templates, you can grant all users all permissions or no permissions. For contact points, you can extend or limit permissions to individual contact points.

Recording rules for Grafana-managed alerts

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Create recording rules for Grafana-managed alert rules to calculate frequently needed expressions or computationally expensive expressions in advance and save the result as a new set of time series. Querying this new time series is faster, especially for dashboards since they query the same expression every time the dashboards refresh. Previously, this was only available for data-source managed alert rules.

In Grafana OSS and Enterprise, you can create both Grafana-managed and data source-managed recording rules if you enable the grafanaManagedRecordingRules feature flag.

Documentation

Data sources

GitHub App authentication for the GitHub data source

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Authenticate the GitHub data source using a GitHub App, an alternative to personal access tokens (PATs). GitHub App authentication offers enhanced security by granting more granular permissions, reducing the risk of over-permissioning.

For more information, refer to the GitHub data source documentation for detailed instructions on setting up GitHub App authentication.

Documentation

Available in public preview in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud

Grafana admins struggle to effectively communicate important updates and maintenance information to their users through traditional channels like email and Slack. Now you can display customizable banners within the Grafana interface to ensure critical information is visible and timely. This ensures that all users are immediately informed of important updates, maintenance schedules, compliance info, or other crucial messages, reducing the likelihood of missed communications and enhancing overall user awareness and engagement.

By default, only organization administrators can create announcement banners. You can customize who can create announcement banners with Role-based access control.

To use the Announcement banner in self-managed Grafana, turn on the notificationBanner feature toggle in Grafana v11.3 or newer and navigate in your Grafana instance to Admin > General > Announcement Banner

Improved subfolder creation flow

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

You can now create subfolders within folders where you have Edit or Admin rights without needing any additional permissions. This enables users and teams to fully manage their folder and dashboard hierarchy, and allows you to keep your instance secure by granting users the minimum necessary set of permissions.

Documentation

Plugins

Plugin details page redesign

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

To help make it easier for administrators to assess and interact with Grafana plugins, we are reworking the plugin details page to highlight important metadata, such as when the plugin was last updated.

We intend to further extend this new layout with consistent links for all plugins, to complement the custom links which can currently be optionally configured. This improved consistency will enable simpler interaction with a plugin’s developer - whether that is Grafana Labs, our commercial partners, or our community. These links will include actions such as raising feature requests or bug reports, as well as allowing our community developers to indicate available support and sponsorship options for those that depend on their work.

Authentication and authorization

Configure LDAP through the UI

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

Use the new UI to set up your LDAP server as an Identity Provider, to smooth out the setup process and get quick confirmation that it works properly.

The new user interface makes it much clearer what each option does, and setting up the various configurations is now more transparent. Also, you no longer need to restart the Grafana instance for the new settings to take effect.

To use LDAP in the UI, enable the feature toggle ssoSettingsLDAP.

Developers: Support RBAC in Plugins

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Documentation

We’re excited to announce that plugins can now leverage Grafana’s role based access control to define their own roles and permissions in order to control access to their routes.

To define roles and their default assignments, plugin developers need to add a roles section to their plugin.json file. Grafana will automatically register these roles and assign them to the corresponding basic roles: Viewer, Editor, Admin, and Grafana Admin.

Following is an example of defining two RBAC plugin roles and assigning them to Admins and Viewers (and thus Editors and Admins) by default:

"roles": [
  {
    "role": {
      "name": "Patents Reader",
      "description": "Read patents",
      "permissions": [
        {"action": "grafana-appwithrbac-app.patents:read"}
      ]
    },
    "grants": ["Admin"]
  },
  {
    "role": {
      "name": "Research papers Reader",
      "description": "Read research papers",
      "permissions": [
        {"action": "grafana-appwithrbac-app.papers:read"}
      ]
    },
    "grants": ["Viewer"]
  }
]

Protecting includes and routes is also straight forward, and can be done through the new action and reqAction field of these sections of the plugin.json file.

Plugin example

If you’d like to test this and explore RBAC for plugins further, refer to this plugin example for guidance.

Known limitation

Plugins permissions are currently restricted to actions without scopes.

What's new in Grafana v11.2

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.2

Welcome to Grafana 11.2! We’ve made a number of improvements in this release, including a Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant in public preview, several new transformations, and a centralized page for viewing your alert history. We’ve also released several new data sources to help you visualize data from Zendesk, Catchpoint, and Yugabyte. Read on to learn more about these and all the new features in v11.2.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.2, check out our Upgrade Guide.

Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant is in public preview

Available in public preview in Grafana Open Source and Enterprise

Migrating from OSS or Enterprise Grafana to Grafana Cloud has traditionally been complex, requiring technical knowledge of Grafana’s HTTP API and time-consuming manual processes. The new Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant changes this by providing a user-friendly interface that automates the migration of your resources. No coding required, it securely handles the transfer in just a few easy steps.

This intuitive UI offers real-time updates on your migration status, making your migration journey faster, more efficient, and less error-prone. Initially, the Cloud Migration Assistant supports dashboards, folders, and core data sources, with plans to include alerting, app plugins, and panel plugins in future updates.

Ready to make the move? Explore our migration guide to learn more about the Cloud Migration Assistant today and begin your effortless transition to Grafana Cloud.

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

As Grafana keeps growing, we have had feedback that it can be hard to find the pages you are looking for in the navigation. That is why we have added a new section to the navigation called ‘Bookmarks’, so you can easily access all of your favourite pages at the top of the navigation.

This feature is being rolled out across Grafana Cloud now. To use Bookmarks in self-managed Grafana, turn on the pinNavItems feature toggle in Grafana v11.2 or newer.

Dashboards and visualizations

Transformation updates

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

We’ve made a number of exciting updates to transformations!

You can now use variables in some transformations

Template variables are now supported for the Limit, Sort by, Filter data by values, Grouping to matrix (a community contribution ⭐️), Heatmap, and Histogram transformations. This enables dynamic transformation configurations based on panel data and dashboard variables.

New transpose transformation

We’re excited to announce the new Transpose transformation, which allows you to pivot the data frame, converting rows into columns and columns into rows. This feature is particularly useful for data sources that don’t support pivot queries, enabling more flexible and insightful data visualizations.

For more information, refer to the documentation.

This feature is a community contribution ❤️

Group to nested tables is now generally available

We’re excited to announce that the Group to nested tables transformation is now generally available! Easily group your table data by specified fields and perform calculations on each group. With this transformation, you can enhance the depth and utility of your table visualizations.

See the documentation for more information.

Group to nested tables transformation

Format string is now generally available

The Format string transformation is now generally available! Use this transformation to customize the output of a string field. From formatting your string data to upper, lower, title case, and more, this transformation provides a convenient way to standardize and tailor the presentation of string data for better visualization and analysis. See the documentation for more information.

New cumulative and window calculations available in Add field from calculation

The Add field from calculation transformation now supports both cumulative and window calculations. The cumulative function calculates on the current row and all preceding rows. You can calculate the total or the mean of your data up to and including the current row. With the window function you can calculate the mean, standard deviation, or variance on a specified set (window) of your data. The window can either be trailing or centered. With a trailing window the current row will be the last row in the window. With a centered window the window will be centered on the current row.

See the documentation for more information.

Improvements in canvas visualizations

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Standardized tooltips

As a continuation of our efforts to standardize tooltips across visualizations, we’ve updated canvas visualization tooltips to be supported for all elements tied to data. Besides the element name and data, the tooltip now also displays the timestamp. This is a step forward from the previous implementation where tooltips were shown only if data links were configured.

Data links improvements

We’ve updated canvas visualizations so that you can add data links to canvas elements without using an override. The Selected element configuration now includes a Data links section where you can add data links to elements using the same steps as in other visualizations.

Data links in canvas elements can also be configured to open with a single click. To enable this functionality, select Link under the one One-click section in the Selected element data link options. If there are multiple data links for an element, the first link in the list has the one-click functionality.

As part of this improvement, we’ve also added the ability to control the order in which data links are displayed by dragging and dropping them. This improvement has been added to all visualizations.

In future releases, we’ll add one-click functionality to data links in other Grafana visualizations.

Documentation

State timeline supports pagination

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

The state timeline visualization now supports pagination. The Page size option lets you paginate the state timeline visualization to limit how many series are visible at once. This is useful when you have many series. Previously, all the series in a state timeline were made to fit within the single window of the panel, which could make it hard to read.

With paginated results, the visualization displays a subset of all series on each page.

Pagination is especially useful if you’re running a query on a dynamic data source. It’s also helpful regardless of whether you have many data frames with just two fields (time + value) or few frames with many fields (time + many values).

This feature is a community contribution ❤️

Documentation

Alerting

Centralized alert history page

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

View a history of all alert events generated by your Grafana-managed alert rules from one centralized page. This helps you see patterns in your alerts over time, observe trends, make predictions, and even debug alerts that might be firing too often.

An alert event is displayed each time an alert instance changes its state over a period of time. All alert events are displayed regardless of whether silences or mute timings are set, so you’ll see a complete set of your data history even if you’re not necessarily being notified.

For Grafana Enterprise and OSS users:

To try out the new alert history page, enable the alertingCentralAlertHistory feature toggle and configure Loki annotations.

Documentation

Explore

Logs filtering and pinning in Explore content outline

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Grafana Explore now allows for logs filtering and pinning in content outline.

Filtering Logs: All log levels are now automatically available in the content outline. You can filter by log level, currently supported for Elasticsearch and Loki data sources. To select multiple filters, hold down the command key on Mac or the control key on Windows while clicking.

Pinning Logs: The new pinning feature allows users to pin logs to the content outline, making them easily accessible for quick reference during investigations. To pin a log, hover over a log in the logs panel and click on the Pin to content outline icon in the log row menu. Clicking on a pinned log will open the log context modal, showing the log highlighted in context with other logs. From here, you can also open the log in split mode to preserve the time range in the left pane while having the time range specific to that log in the right pane.

Forward direction search for Loki

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Explore now supports forward direction search for Loki logs searches. This allows users to seamlessly browse logs in a time range in forward chronological order (for example, tracing a specific user’s actions using logs).

To use this feature, select Forward for the Direction option. Note that in the screenshot above, logs are rendered beginning from the starting time period of the query, not the end.

Documentation

Data sources

Cloudwatch Metric Insights cross account observability support

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

We are excited to announce support for cross-account querying in Metric Insights query builder for AWS Cloudwatch Plugin. This enables building SQL queries to monitor across multiple accounts in the same region in AWS Cloudwatch.

This feature introduces an account drop-down for selecting one or all of your source accounts and builds a query that targets them. Furthermore, results can be grouped by account ID by selecting Account ID in the Group By drop-down.

For more complex queries that are not covered by the options in the builder you can switch to the manual Code editor and edit the query.

To set up cross-account querying for AWS Cloudwatch Plugin, see instructions here.

Zendesk data source for Grafana

Available in public preview in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud

We are excited to announce the release of a new Zendesk data source for Grafana. This addition extends Grafana’s capabilities, enabling seamless integration with Zendesk.

You can find out more about the data source in the Zendesk data source documentation.

Catchpoint Enterprise data source for Grafana

Available in public preview in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud

Introducing Catchpoint data source plugin.

The Catchpoint data source plugin allows you to query and visualize Tests, RUM and SLO data from within Grafana.

Yugabyte data source for Grafana

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

We are excited to announce the release of a new data source for Grafana: Yugabyte. This addition extends Grafana’s capabilities, enabling seamless integration with YugabyteDB.

You can find out more about the data source in the Yugabyte data source documentation.

The datasource has some known limitations: ad-hoc filters and TLS/network customization are not yet supported. Improvements and additional supported features are planned for future updates.

Authentication and authorization

Map org-specific user roles from your OAuth provider

Generally available in Grafana Open Source and Enterprise

Assign users to particular organizations with a specific role in Grafana, depending on an attribute value obtained from your identity provider.

This is a longstanding feature request from the community. We collaborated with our community to implement the request and have added this capability in Grafana 11.2.0.

For Generic OAuth and Okta, you can configure the claim (using the org_attribute_path setting) that contains the organizations which the user belongs to. Other OAuth providers use the same attribute for organization mapping that is used for group mapping: Entra ID (previously Azure AD), GitLab and Google use the current user’s Groups, and GitHub uses the user’s Teams.

To configure organization mapping for your instance, please check the documentation for the OAuth provider you are using in the Grafana documentation. You can find an example of how to configure organization mapping on each OAuth provider page under the Org roles mapping example section.

Better SAML integration for Azure AD

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

When setting up Grafana with Azure AD using the SAML protocol, the Azure AD Graph API sometimes returns a follow-up Graph API call rather than the information itself. This is the case for users who belong to more than 150 groups when using SAML.

With Grafana 11.2, we offer a mechanism for setting up an application as a Service Account in Azure AD and retrieving information from Graph API.

Please refer to our documentation on how to set up an Azure AD registered application for this setup.

API support for LDAP configuration

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

The SSO settings API has been updated to include support for LDAP settings. This feature is experimental behind the feature flag ssoSettingsLDAP.

You will soon be able to configure LDAP from the UI and Terraform.

Reduce number of required fields from the SAML form

Generally available in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud Pro and Advanced

The private key and certificate fields are no longer mandatory in the SAML form. To configure SAML without providing a private key and a certificate you have to opt out from using signed requests.

Generate SAML certificate and private key

Generally available in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud Pro

You can generate a new certificate and private key for SAML directly from the UI form. Click on the Generate key and certificate button from the Sign requests tab in the SAML form and then fill in the information you want to be embedded in your generated certificate.

OpenID Connect Discovery URL for Generic OAuth

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

The OpenID Connect Discovery URL is available in the Generic OAuth form. The info extracted from this URL will be used to populate the Auth URL, Token URL and API URL fields.

What's new in Grafana v11.1

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.1

Welcome to Grafana 11.1! This release contains some minor improvements following on the big announcements in Grafana 11.0. We’ve adding cell text wrapping to table visualizations, a much-requested feature. We’ve also redesigned the Alerting settings page and made it possible to manage access to Silences using role-based access control (RBAC). A number of accessibility improvements are included in this release, making Grafana easier to use for everyone. And lastly, the XY chart is now generally available.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.1, check out our Upgrade Guide.

Dashboards and visualizations

Visualization ease of use improvements

We’ve made a number of small improvements to the data visualization experience in Grafana.

Table cell text wrapping

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

A longstanding feature request for the table visualization is to allow wrapping of text within cells. In Grafana 11.1 we’ve added this capability! By default, the column with the longest text is selected for wrapping. You can also configure wrapping manually using field overrides.

Learn more about the table panel in our table panel documentation.

Note
Text wrapping is in public preview, however, it’s available to use by default. We’d love hear from you about how this new feature is working. To provide feedback, you can open an issue in the Grafana GitHub repository.

Stat visualization percent change color mode options

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Sometimes less is more! The Standard behavior for percent change in the stat visualization is to color positive percent changes green and negative percent changes red. Depending on your use case however, you may want to customize how percent change color is set. We’ve added the options to have percent change color mode Inverted (with positive red and negative green) or match the Same as value.

XY chart is GA

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

We’re promoting XY chart out of public preview and into general availability.

XY charts provide a way to visualize arbitrary x and y values in a graph so that you can easily show the relationship between two variables. XY charts are typically used to create scatter plots. You can also use them to create bubble charts where field values determine the size of each bubble:

Over the past several months we’ve introduced multiple enhancements to the visualizations like auto mode, which now handles most scenarios that previously required manual configuration. Additionally, we’ve added better control over point styling and further improved performance. We’re excited to include XY chart as a first class citizen in the core Grafana visualization library. To learn more about the panel, refer to the documentation.

To use the new XY chart visualization, you must first enable the autoMigrateXYChartPanel feature toggle.

Alerting

Re-designed settings page for Alerting

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

The new settings page provides you with a holistic view of where Grafana-managed alert instances are forwarded.

Manage which Alertmanagers receive alert instances from Grafana-managed rules without navigating and editing data sources.
Manage version snapshots for the built-in Alertmanager, which allows administrators to roll back unintentional changes or mistakes in the Alertmanager configuration.
There is also a visual diff that compares the historical snapshot with the latest configuration to see which changes were made.

Learn more in the Alertmanager configuration documentation.

Alerting template selector

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Enables you to easily choose which templates you want to use in your alert notification messages by adding a template selector in the Contact Points form.

Select from existing templates or enter a custom one for your specific needs. You can switch between the two tabs to access the list of available templates and copy them across to the customized version.

Learn more in the documentation.

Add OAuth2 to HTTP settings for vanilla Alertmanager / Mimir

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Configure OAuth2 authentication for any Alertmanager or Mimir receiver (called Contact Points in Grafana) through the user interface. Learn more about alerting contact points in supported contact point integrations and find the reference for Oauth2 fields in the Prometheus Alertmanager docs for Oauth2.

Note that OAuth2 is not yet implemented for the Grafana built-in Alertmanager.

Improved paused alert visibility

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Pause and resume alert rule evaluation directly from the Alert rules list and details view. This helps Improve visibility of when alert rules have been paused by displaying “Paused” as the alert rule state.

Learn more in the alert rules documentation.

Removes requirement of datasources:query permission for reading rules

Generally available in Grafana Enterprise and Cloud

Fetching a rule group no longer requires the datasources:query permission for every data source used by the rules within that group. Now, the only requirements are alert.rules:read and folders:read for the folder the group is contained in.

Note: datasources:query is still required to preview an alert rule, regardless of alert rules and folders permissions.

Learn more in the RBAC configuration documentation.

Rule-specific silences with permissions

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

More easily create silences directly from the Alert rule list view or detail page.

These rule-specific silences are guaranteed to only apply to a single rule and permissions to read, create, update or delete are tied to a user’s permissions for that rule.

Rule-specific silences with RBAC

Generally available in Grafana Enterprise and Cloud

Manage silences through Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). In addition to the Grafana open source functionality in Rule-specific silences with permissions, you can choose who can create, edit, and read silences using the following permissions:

Users with the alert.silences:create permission, scoped within a folder, are able to create silences for rules contained within that folder and its subfolders
Users with the alert.silences:read permission, scoped within a folder, are able to read silences for rules contained within that folder and its subfolders, and general silences
Users with the alert.silences:write permission, scoped within a folder, are able to expire and recreate silences for rules contained within that folder and its subfolders

Learn more about managing access using roles.

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Send alerts notifications to AWS simple notifications service.

Recent accessibility improvements

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

GeoMap keyboard support

The GeoMap panel can now be used with a keyboard! Focus the map area, move around with the arrows keys and zoom in and out using + and -.

Panel shortcut keyboard support

We have panel shortcuts, which previously only worked on whichever panel you hovered over. It now also takes into account the keyboard focus.

Heading improvements

The majority of screen reader users find things on a web page using headings. Recently, we have added missing headings and corrected heading levels in some places, most notably panel titles.

Reduced motion support

Users who are affected by a lot of animations on a web site have the possibility to configure reduced motion settings. Grafana now supports this, either by making animations simpler or removing them altogether. We have implemented a rule, which prohibits unhandled transitions and animations, ensuring that we can continuously support reduced motion.

What's new in Grafana v11.0

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:15:37 +0000

What’s new in Grafana v11.0

Welcome to Grafana 11.0! This release contains some major improvements: most notably, the ability to explore your Prometheus metrics and Loki logs without writing any PromQL or LogQL, using Explore Metrics and Explore Logs. The dashboard experience is better than ever with edit mode for dashboards, AI-generated dashboard names and descriptions, and general availability for subfolders. You can also take advantage of improvements to the canvas and table visualizations, new transformations, a revamp of the Alert Rule page, and more.

For even more detail about all the changes in this release, refer to the changelog. For the specific steps we recommend when you upgrade to v11.0, check out our Upgrade Guide.

Breaking changes

For Grafana v11.0, we’ve also provided a list of breaking changes to help you upgrade with greater confidence. For information about these along with guidance on how to proceed, refer to Breaking changes in Grafana v11.0.

Explore Metrics and Logs

Explore Metrics

Public preview in all editions of Grafana

Explore Metrics is a query-less experience for browsing Prometheus-compatible metrics. Search for or filter to find a metric. Quickly find related metrics - all in just a few clicks. You do not need to learn PromQL! With Explore Metrics, you can:

easily slice and dice metrics based on their labels, so you can see anomalies right away
See the right visualization for your metric based on its type (e.g. gauge vs. counter) without building it yourself
surface other metrics relevant to the current metric
“explore in a drawer” - expand a drawer over a dashboard with more content, so you don’t lose your place
view a history of user steps when navigating through metrics and their filters
easily pivot to other related telemetry - IE, logs or traces

… all without writing any queries!

To learn more, refer to Explore Metrics as well as the following video demo:

Explore Logs

Experimental in Grafana Open Source and Enterprise

Explore Logs is a queryless experience for exploring Loki logs - no LogQL required! The primary interaction modes are point-and-click based on log volume, similar to Explore Metrics.

Highlights:

View log volume and log line samples when you first land in Explore Logs (no more “blank screen!”)
Explore additional labels and detected fields in a similar way, focusing on volume and distribution; add them to your “query” to refine your logs search without needing LogQL – See common patterns in your log lines, to easily filter out noise or focus in on anomalies
For power users, an easy way to hop into the familiar Explore while preserving context

Explore Logs is Open Source, and experimental - some papercuts are to be expected. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Dashboards and visualizations

Scenes powered Dashboards

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

For the past few months we’ve been working on a major update of our Dashboards architecture and migrated it to the Scenes library. This migration provides us with more stable, dynamic, and flexible dashboards as well as setting the foundation for what we envision the future of Grafana dashboards will be. Here are two of the improvements that are being introduced as part of this work.

Edit mode

It can be difficult to efficiently navigate through the visually cluttered options during the dashboard editing process. With the introduction of the edit mode, we aim to provide an easier way to discover and interact with the dashboard edit experience.

Fixed positioning of template variables and time picker

We moved the time picker into the dashboard canvas and now, together with template variables, it will stick to the top as you scroll through your dashboard. This has historically been a very requested feature that we’re very happy to be able to finally roll out!

Known limitations

The variable dependency graph is not yet available.
It’s no longer possible to switch a regular panel to a library panel from the edit view.

If you want to learn more, in detail, about all the improvements we’ve made, don’t miss our blog post.

Scenes for viewers

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Dashboards, when accessed by users with the Viewer role, are now using the Scenes library. Those users shouldn’t see any difference in the dashboards apart from two small changes to the user interface (UI): the variables UI has slightly changed and the time picker is now part of the dashboard container.

Dashboards aren’t affected for users in other roles.

This is the first step towards a more robust and dynamic dashboarding system that we’ll be releasing in the upcoming months.

Subfolders

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Subfolders are here at last!

Some of you want subfolders in order to keep things tidier. It’s easy for dashboard sprawl to get out of control, and setting up folders in a nested hierarchy helps with that.

Others of you want subfolders in order to create nested layers of permissions, where teams have access at different levels that reflect their organization’s hierarchy.

We are thrilled to bring this long-awaited functionality to our community of users! Subfolders are currently being rolled out to Grafana Cloud instances and will be generally available to all Grafana users for the Grafana 11 release.

Just a quick note: the upgrade to enable subfolders can cause some issues with alerts in certain cases. We think these cases are pretty rare, but just in case, you’ll want to check for this:

If you’ve previously set up a folder that uses a forward slash in its name, and you have an alert rule in that folder, and the notification policy is set to match that folder’s name, notifications will be sent to the default receiver instead of the configured receiver.

To correct this, take the following steps:

Create a copy of the affected routes
Rewrite the matchers for the new copy. For example, if the original matcher was grafanafolder=folder_with/in_title, then the new route matcher will be grafana_folder=folder_with/_in_title
After rewriting the matchers, you can delete the old routes.

If you use file provisioning, you can upgrade and update the routes at the same time.

Use AI to generate titles and descriptions for panels and dashboards

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

You can now use generative AI to assist you in your Grafana dashboards. So far generative AI can help you generate panel and dashboard titles and descriptions - You can now generate a title and description for your panel or dashboard based on the data you’ve added to it. This is useful when you want to quickly visualize your data and don’t want to spend time coming up with a title or description.

Make sure to enable and configure Grafana’s LLM app plugin. For more information, refer to the Grafana LLM app plugin documentation.

When enabled, look for the ✨ Auto generate option next to the Title and Description fields in your panels and dashboards, or when you press the Save button.

Improvements to the canvas visualization

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

We’ve made a number of improvements to the canvas visualization.

Enhanced flowcharting functionality

With this release, we’ve updated the canvas visualization to include much-requested flowcharting features. These improvements are:

Addition of widely-used elements: cloud, parallelogram, and triangle.
Addition of midpoint controls so that the connectors no longer have to be straight lines.
Addition of more connector styles including dashed lines as well as corner radius and direction control.
Horizontal and vertical snapping for connectors.
Addition of rounded corner styling for elements.
Ability to rotate elements in the canvas.

Universal data link support

We’ve updated data links so that you can add them to almost all elements or element properties that are tied to data. Previously, you could only add data links to text elements or elements that used the TextConfig object. This update removes that limitation.

Note
This update doesn’t apply to the drone and button elements.

Documentation

Infinite panning for the canvas visualization

Available in public preview in all editions of Grafana

With the newly added Infinite panning editor option, you can now view and navigate very large canvases. This option is displayed when the Pan and zoom switch is enabled.

To try out this feature, you must first enable the canvasPanelPanZoom feature toggle.

Documentation

Colored table rows with conditional formatting

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Grafana 11 adds the ability to color full table rows using the Colored background cell type of the table visualization. When you configure fields in a table to use this cell type, an option to apply the color of the cell to the entire row becomes available.

This feature is useful for a wide variety of use cases including mapping status fields to colors (for example, info, debug, warning) and allowing rows to be colored based on threshold values. This is one of the first steps in making formatting tables more seamless, and allows for quick scanning of data using the table visualization.

To learn more, refer to the documentation for the Colored background cell type.

Set threshold colors in the Config from query transformation

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

You now have the ability to customize specific colors for individual thresholds when using the Config from query results transformer. Previously, when you added multiple thresholds, they all defaulted to the same color, red. With this addition, you gain the flexibility to assign distinct colors to each threshold.

This feature addresses a common pain point highlighted by users. With customizable threshold colors, you now have greater control over your data representation, fostering more insightful and impactful analyses across diverse datasets.

Substring matcher added to the Filter by value transformation

Generally available in Grafana Cloud and Open Source

This update to the Filter data by values transformation simplifies data filtering by enabling partial string matching on field values thanks to two new matchers: Contains substring and Does not contain substring. With the substring matcher built into the Filter data by values transformation, you can efficiently filter large datasets, displaying relevant information with speed and precision. Whether you’re searching for keywords, product names, or user IDs, this feature streamlines the process, saving time and effort while ensuring accurate data output.

In the Filter data by values transformation, simply add a condition, choose a field, choose your matcher, and then input the string to match against.

This update will be rolled out to customers over the next few weeks.

Reporting

PDF export improvements

Available in public preview in Grafana Cloud and Enterprise

Introducing a major performance improvement for the PDF export feature.

Are you tired of waiting for your PDF to be generated or your report to be sent? We’re working on a major update of the dashboard-to-PDF feature to make it faster for large dashboards. The generation time will no longer be proportional to the number of panels in your dashboard. As an example, an SLO dashboard containing around 200 panels has gone from taking more than seven minutes to be generated to only eleven seconds.

This update also fixes all caveats related to rendering a report with panels or rows set to repeat by a variable, like rendering repeating panels inside collapsed rows.

To try out this update, enable the newPDFRendering feature toggle.

Alerting

Keep Last State for Grafana Managed Alerting

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

(Re-)introducing “Keep Last State” to Grafana managed alert rules.

You can now choose to keep the last evaluated state of an alert rule when that rule produces “No Data” or “Error” results. Simply choose the “Keep Last State” option for no data or error handling when editing a rule. Refer to the Alerting documentation on state and health of alert rules for more information.

Alert detail view redesign

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

The new alert rule detail view has a new look and feel with helpful metadata at the top. The namespace and group are shown in the breadcrumb navigation. This is interactive and can be used to filter rules by namespace or group. The rest of the alert detail content is split up into tabs:

Query and conditions

View the details of the query that is used for the alert rule, including the expressions and intermediate values for each step of the expression pipeline. A graph view is included for range queries and data sources that return time series-like data frames.

Instances

Explore each alert instance, its status, labels and various other metadata for multi-dimensional alert rules.

History

Explore the recorded history for an alert rule.

Details

Debug or audit using the alert rule metadata and view the alert rule annotations.

RBAC for alert rule provisioning APIs

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

The Alerting Provisioning HTTP API has been updated to enforce Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).

For Grafana OSS, users with the Editor role can now use the API.
For Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud, users with the role Rules Writer and Set Provisioning status can access the API and limit access to alert rules that use a particular data source.
Other roles related to provisioning, for example Access to alert rules provisioning API still work.

Data sources

Removal of old Tempo Search and Loki Search in Tempo

Generally available in all editions of Grafana

Removal of old Tempo Search tab

In Grafana v10.1, we added a Tempo search editor powered by TraceQL (search tab). We also recommended using this new editor over the older non-TraceQL powered editor.

The older non-TraceQL powered editor has been removed. Any existing queries using the older editor will be automatically migrated to the new TraceQL-powered editor.

The new TraceQL-powered editor makes it much easier to build your query by way of static filters, better input/selection validation, copy query to the TraceQL tab, query preview, dedicated status filter, and the ability to run aggregate by (metrics summary) queries.

Refer to Query tracing data to learn more.

Removal of Loki Search tab in Tempo

The Loki Search tab has been around since before we could natively query Tempo for traces. This search is used by a low number of users in comparison to the TraceQL-powered editor (Search tab) or the TraceQL tab itself.

If you would like to see what logs are linked to a specific trace or service, you can use the Trace to logs feature, which provides an easy way to create a custom link and set an appropriate time range if necessary.

MSSQL: Windows Active Directory (Kerberos) authentication

Generally available in Grafana Open Source and Enterprise

You can now use Windows Active Directory (or Kerberos) to authenticate to MSSQL servers from Grafana.

There are four primary ways to authenticate from Grafana to a MSSQL instance with Windows Active Directory:

Windows Active Directory username and password
Specify the path to a valid keytab file.
Specify the path to an up to date credential cache.
Specify the path to a JSON document that holds information about several credential caches and the user and database for each one.

To get started, refer to the Getting Started documentation for MSSQL.

Authentication and authorization

New strong password policy

Available in public preview in Grafana Open Source and Enterprise

If you manage your users using Grafana’s built-in basic authorization as an identity provider, consider enabling our new strong password policy feature.

Starting with Grafana v11.0, you can enable an opinionated strong password policy feature. This configuration option validates all password updates to comply with our strong password policy.

To learn more about the strong password policy in Grafana, refer to the documentation.

Anonymous users are billed in Grafana Enterprise

Generally available in Grafana Enterprise

We are announcing a license change to the anonymous access feature in Grafana 11. As you may already be aware, anonymous access allows users access to Grafana without login credentials. Anonymous access was an early feature of Grafana to share dashboards; however, we recently introduced Public Dashboards which allows you to share dashboards in a more secure manner. We also noticed that anonymous access inadvertently resulted in user licensing issues. After careful consideration, we have decided to charge for the continued use of anonymous access starting in Grafana 11.

Affected Grafana versions

Anonymous authentication is disabled by default in Grafana Cloud. This licensing change only affects Grafana Enterprise (self-managed) edition. Anonymous users will be charged as active users in Grafana Enterprise.

Documentation

What's new in Grafana v11 on Grafana Labs

What's new in Grafana v11.6

What’s new in Grafana v11.6

What's new in Grafana v11.5

What’s new in Grafana v11.5

What's new in Grafana v11.4

What’s new in Grafana v11.4

Query Cloudwatch Logs Insights with PPL and SQL

What's new in Grafana v11.3

What’s new in Grafana v11.3

Scenes-powered Dashboards are generally available

Known limitations

Additional dashboard and visualization improvements

Auto-formatted table cell values in Cell Inspect

Canvas actions

Legend support in bar gauge visualizations

Apply the same binary transformation to all the number fields in a given table at once

Actions for visualizations

Explore Logs

The Explore Logs plugin is installed by default

Correlations

Add correlations to external URLs in Explore

Alerting

Simplified query section for alert rule creation

Role-based access control for notifications in Alerting

Recording rules for Grafana-managed alerts

Data sources

GitHub App authentication for the GitHub data source

Announcement banner

Improved subfolder creation flow

Plugins

Plugin details page redesign

Authentication and authorization

Configure LDAP through the UI

Developers: Support RBAC in Plugins

What's new in Grafana v11.2

What’s new in Grafana v11.2

Grafana Cloud Migration Assistant is in public preview

Navigation bookmarks

Dashboards and visualizations

Transformation updates

Improvements in canvas visualizations

Standardized tooltips

Data links improvements

State timeline supports pagination

Alerting

Centralized alert history page

Explore

Logs filtering and pinning in Explore content outline

Forward direction search for Loki

Data sources

Cloudwatch Metric Insights cross account observability support

Zendesk data source for Grafana

Catchpoint Enterprise data source for Grafana

Yugabyte data source for Grafana

Authentication and authorization

Map org-specific user roles from your OAuth provider

Better SAML integration for Azure AD

API support for LDAP configuration

Reduce number of required fields from the SAML form

Generate SAML certificate and private key

OpenID Connect Discovery URL for Generic OAuth

What's new in Grafana v11.1

What’s new in Grafana v11.1

Dashboards and visualizations

Visualization ease of use improvements

Table cell text wrapping

Stat visualization percent change color mode options

XY chart is GA

Alerting

Re-designed settings page for Alerting

Alerting template selector

Add OAuth2 to HTTP settings for vanilla Alertmanager / Mimir

Improved paused alert visibility

Removes requirement of datasources:query permission for reading rules

Rule-specific silences with permissions

Rule-specific silences with RBAC

Support for AWS SNS integration in Grafana-managed alerts

Recent accessibility improvements

GeoMap keyboard support