Releasing Grafana Loki

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:28:18 +0000

Releasing Grafana Loki

This document is a series of instructions for core Grafana Loki maintainers to be able to publish a new Grafana Loki release.

The general process for releasing a new version of Grafana Loki is to merge the release PR for that version. Every commit to branches matching the pattern release-[0-9]+.[0-9]+.x will trigger a prepare patch release workflow. This workflow will build release candidates for that patch, automatically generate release notes based on the commits since the last release, and update the long-running PR for that release. To publish the release, merge the PR.

Every commit to branches matching the pattern k[0-9]+ will trigger a prepare minor release workflow. This follows the same process as a patch release, but prepares a minor release instead. To publish the minor release, merge the PR.

Releasing a new major version requires a custom major release workflow to be created to run of the branch we want to release from. Once that workflow is created, the steps for releasing a new major are the same as a minor or patch release.

Release stable version

Release patched version

Release security patched version

Releasing Loki Build Image

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:28:18 +0000

Releasing Loki Build Image

The loki-build-image is the Docker image used to run tests and build Grafana Loki binaries in CI.

The build and publish process of the image is triggered upon a merge to main if any changes were made in the folder ./loki-build-image/.

To build and use the loki-build-image:

Create a branch with the desired changes to the ./loki-build-image/Dockerfile.
Update the BUILD_IMAGE_VERSION variable in the Makefile.
Commit your changes.
Run make build-image-push to build and publish the new version of the build image.
Run make release-workflows to update the Github workflows.
Commit your changes.
Push your changes to the remote branch.
Open a PR against the main branch.

Maintaining on Grafana Labs

Releasing Grafana Loki

Releasing Grafana Loki

Release stable version

Release patched version

Release security patched version

Releasing Loki Build Image

Releasing Loki Build Image