Skip to content

(Breaking Change) Regex Engine Update for Config Compilation

Deprecation

IMPORTANT: This changelog has been superseded. This breaking change has been consolidated with two others into a single entry, and the date is now July 17, 2026. Please refer to the updated changelog for up-to-date details. The information below is retained for reference only.


On June 26, 2026, CircleCI is updating the regex engine used to evaluate when: matches: pattern: conditions in pipeline configs. This change improves the security and reliability of config compilation.

After this date, the following regex features will no longer be supported in pattern: fields and configs using them will fail to compile:

  • Negative lookaheads
  • Negative lookbehinds
  • Possessive quantifiers
  • Backreferences

Please refer to our Discuss post for full details with regex examples and fixes.

Previous changes