The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the first beta release of
PostgreSQL 19 is now available for download.
This release contains PostgreSQL 19 feature previews ahead of general
availability, though some details of the release can change during the beta
period.
You can find information about all of the PostgreSQL 19 features and changes in
the release notes:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/19/release-19.html
In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you
to test the new features of PostgreSQL 19 on your systems to help us eliminate
bugs and other issues. While we do not advise you to run beta versions in
production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical
application workloads against this beta release.
Your testing and feedback help the community ensure that PostgreSQL 19
upholds our standards of delivering a stable, reliable release of the
world's most advanced open source relational database. Please read more about
our beta testing process and how
you can contribute:
https://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta/
PostgreSQL 19 Feature Highlights
Below are some of the feature highlights that are planned for PostgreSQL 19.
This list is not exhaustive; for the full list of planned features, please see
the release notes.
Performance
PostgreSQL 19 builds on the asynchronous I/O subsystem introduced in
PostgreSQL 18. In this release, io_method=worker now automatically scales the
number of I/O workers based on the new
io_min_workers
and
io_max_workers
settings.
This release also introduces the
pg_plan_advice
extension, which lets users stabilize and control planner decisions, along with
pg_stash_advice
to apply advice automatically using query identifiers.
This release brings improvements to vacuum and maintenance operations.
Autovacuum can now use parallel workers, which can be configured with the new
autovacuum_max_parallel_workers
setting, and a new autovacuum scoring system
helps prioritize tables to vacuum. PostgreSQL 19 further enhances vacuum with
a new strategy that can automatically reduce future vacuuming work by marking
pages as visible while they're being queried. Additionally, this release
adds the new REPACK
command and its nonblocking CONCURRENTLY
option, which allow tables to be rebuilt with less operational overhead.
PostgreSQL 19 shows up to 2x better performance on inserts when foreign key
checks are present. Additionally, this release improves several areas of
the query planner and executor, including new anti-join optimizations, broader
use of incremental sorts,
eager aggregation
that speeds up row processing,
faster reads from storage during parallel sequential scans, and
simplification of IS DISTINCT FROM
and IS NOT DISTINCT FROM to plain
<> and = operators when the inputs are not nullable. There are also
improvements for
LISTEN/NOTIFY
scalability that impact multi-channel workloads.
Developer Experience
PostgreSQL 19 introduces support for
SQL/PGQ,
letting users execute property graph queries using SQL standard syntax. This
release also expands temporal query capabilities with UPDATE and DELETE
support for the
FOR PORTION OF
clause, complementing the temporal constraint support added in
PostgreSQL 18. This release also adds
ALTER TABLE ... MERGE PARTITIONS
and ALTER TABLE ... SPLIT PARTITIONS to make it easier to reorganize
partitioned tables in place. There is now also support for returning rows that
conflict during an upsert operation using
INSERT ... ON CONFLICT DO SELECT ... RETURNING.
PostgreSQL 19 introduces the new
GROUP BY ALL
syntax, making it easy to add
all non-aggregate and non-window output columns as part of the grouping. This
release extends string processing capabilities in
jsonpath
with the addition of
lower(), upper(), initcap(), replace(), split_part(), and the trim()
family of functions.
PostgreSQL 19 makes it easier to adopt "read-your-writes" query patterns
when working with replicas using the new
WAIT FOR LSN
command. This lets a
session wait until changes up to a specific log position (LSN) have been
replayed on the replica before executing a SELECT query.
PostgreSQL 19 also adds new SQL functions to retrieve the
DDL statements
needed to recreate roles, tablespaces, and databases, simplifying
scripting and migration tasks. Additionally, the
random()
function now works
with date and timestamp types, and
PL/Python
now supports event triggers.
Security Features
PostgreSQL 19 adds server-side support for Server Name Indication (SNI) through
a new
pg_hosts.conf
file, allowing a single PostgreSQL server to present
different TLS certificates based on the hostname requested by the client. There
is also a new
password_expiration_warning_threshold
setting (defaulting to 7 days) to warn users in advance of upcoming password
expirations.
Further to the ongoing deprecation efforts of
md5 authentication,
this release
issues a warning to the client after a successful md5 authentication. This is
controllable via the new
md5_password_warnings
setting.
Monitoring and Observability
PostgreSQL 19 introduces the
pg_stat_lock
view, which reports per-lock-type
statistics, and
pg_stat_recovery
which provides detailed visibility into the
state of recovery operations. A stats_reset column is now available across
many statistics views to show when counters were last cleared. The
pg_stat_progress_vacuum
and
pg_stat_progress_analyze
views now include a
started_by column that reports the initiator of the operation, and
pg_stat_progress_vacuum also has a mode column that reports how vacuum
is operating.
This release also allows
log_min_messages
levels to be specified per process
type, giving operators finer control over what each part of the system logs.
Additionally, WAL full page write byte counts are now reported in
VACUUM and
ANALYZE log output,
helping identify maintenance operations that generate large amounts of WAL.
Additionally, EXPLAIN ANALYZE
now supports surfacing asynchronous I/O (AIO) statistics through its IO option,
providing better visibility into how queries are using the AIO subsystem.
Logical Replication and Query Federation
In PostgreSQL 19, logical replication now replicates sequence values,
simplifying tasks like online upgrades. Additionally, the new
CREATE PUBLICATION ... EXCEPT
syntax allows you to publish all tables in
a database except for a specified set, while
CREATE SUBSCRIPTION ... SERVER
allows subscriptions to be defined using a foreign server, simplifying
credential management.
PostgreSQL 19 makes it possible to enable logical replication without restarting
a server. Logical replication can now be enabled on demand even when
wal_level
is set to replica, and the new read-only
effective_wal_level
parameter reports the WAL level currently in effect. This reduces the need to
commit upfront to a higher WAL level for clusters that may only occasionally
need it, and avoids disrupting an active workload.
The PostgreSQL foreign data wrapper,
postgres_fdw,
used for query federation, includes several performance improvements, including
pushing down array operations to the remote server, and retrieving and using
statistics from foreign tables to support better local query planning.
Other Highlights
The PostgreSQL 19 beta period includes a temporary "grease mode"
to try to find protocol compatibility problems in the wider ecosystem. This wiki
page contains information on how the campaign works:
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Grease
PostgreSQL 19 allows
data checksums
to be enabled or disabled online, without
requiring a cluster restart or reinitialization.
There are several notable changes to be aware of in
PostgreSQL 19.
Just-in-time compilation (JIT)
is now disabled by default,
and the
default_toast_compression
setting now defaults to lz4,
providing better default compression and decompression performance. Support for
RADIUS authentication is now removed. Additionally, the
vacuumdb --analyze-only
command by default analyzes partitioned tables.
Additional Features
Many other new features and improvements have been added to PostgreSQL 19. Many
of these may also be helpful for your use cases. Please see the
release notes for a
complete list of new and changed features:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/19/release-19.html
Testing for Bugs & Compatibility
The stability of each PostgreSQL release greatly depends on you, the community,
to test the upcoming version with your workloads and testing tools to find bugs
and regressions before the general availability of PostgreSQL 19. As this is a
Beta, minor changes to database behaviors, feature details, and APIs are still
possible. Your feedback and testing will help determine the final tweaks on the
new features, so please test in the near future. The quality of user testing
helps determine when we can make a final release.
A list of open issues
is publicly available in the PostgreSQL wiki. You can
report bugs using this form on
the PostgreSQL website:
https://www.postgresql.org/account/submitbug/
Beta Schedule
This is the first beta release of version 19. The PostgreSQL Project will
release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more
release candidates, until the final release around September/October 2026. For further
information please see the Beta Testing
page.
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