The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the first release candidate of PostgreSQL 19 is now available for download. As a release candidate, PostgreSQL 19 RC 1 will be mostly identical to the initial release of PostgreSQL 19, though some more fixes may be applied prior to the general availability of PostgreSQL 19.

The next scheduled update release for supported versions of PostgreSQL, on November 12, 2026, will include a large number of fixes. Because of this, the release team decided to include these fixes in PostgreSQL 19 before its general availability. This means a second release candidate, PostgreSQL 19 RC 2, will be available on the same day as the update release.

The planned date for the general availability of PostgreSQL 19 is November 19, 2026. Please see the "Release Schedule" section for more details.

Upgrading to PostgreSQL 19 RC 1

To upgrade to PostgreSQL 19 RC 1 from earlier versions of PostgreSQL, you will need to use a major version upgrade strategy, e.g. pg_upgrade or pg_dump / pg_restore. For more information, please visit the documentation section on upgrading:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/19/upgrading.html

Changes Since 19 Beta 4

Several bug fixes were applied to PostgreSQL 19 during the Beta 4 period. These include:

• Several fixes for REPACK (CONCURRENTLY).
• Several fixes for pg_plan_advice.
• Several fixes for new query planner optimizations that rely on whether an expression can be NULL.
• Several fixes for the automatic enablement of logical replication when wal_level is set to replica.
• Fix postgres_fdw statistics import to run as the owner of the foreign table instead of the user running ANALYZE.
• Several fixes for parallel autovacuum.
• Fix COPY (query) TO ... (FORMAT json) to use the query's column names, including aliases, as the JSON keys instead of the table's column names.

For a detailed list of fixes, please visit the open items page.

Release Schedule

This is the first release candidate for PostgreSQL 19. The release team plans to issue a second release candidate, PostgreSQL 19 RC 2, on November 12, 2026. Unless an issue is discovered that requires a delay or an additional release candidate, PostgreSQL 19 should be made generally available on November 19, 2026.

For further information please see the Beta Testing page.

Links

• Download
• Beta Testing Information
• PostgreSQL 19 Beta Release Notes
• PostgreSQL 19 Open Issues
• Submit a Bug
• Donate

If you have corrections or suggestions for this release announcement, please send them to the pgsql-www@lists.postgresql.org public mailing list.