Changes in Neo4j 2025-2026 series

The section covers changes to Neo4j server functionality since 5.26 LTS across different areas per version.

Cypher default version

Neo4j 2026.02: Starting from Neo4j 2026.02, the distributed neo4j.conf explicitly sets db.query.default_language=CYPHER_25. As a result, new deployments using the provided configuration file default to Cypher 25 for newly created databases. For details, see Configure the Cypher default version.

Neo4j-admin import tool

The neo4j-admin database import [full|incremental] commands are affected by the following changes:

Neo4j 2025.12: The default value of the --bad-tolerance=<num> option is changed from 1000 to -1, meaning unlimited. For details, see Import.

Online database backup
Enterprise Edition

The neo4j-admin database backup command is affected by the following changes:

Neo4j 2025.10: The --include-metadata=none|all|users[=user1,user2]|roles option is changed to allow filtering users when performing a database backup. Previously, if you specified users with --include-metadata, the backup file would include commands to create the users that can use the database and their role assignments. Starting from 2025.10, you can define a list of specific users (e.g., users=alice,bob,charlie), which means only those users are included in the backup. For details, refer to Back up an online database.

Database copy
Enterprise Edition

The neo4j-admin database copy command is affected by the following changes:

Neo4j 2025.01: The functionality of the --from-pagecache=<size> option is changed.
Instead of specifying how much cache to allocate when reading the source, now you can control the maximum amount of off-heap memory used for the copy operation, both for reading and writing. By configuring the off-heap memory value, you can impact the cache allocation as well.
To reflect this change, a new name was added to the option: --max-off-heap-memory=<size>.
For details, refer to the Improving the performance.

Cypher Shell

For details, refer to Cypher Shell.

Neo4j 2025.08: A new argument disable is added to the --history option.
Neo4j 2025.06: The default value of the --error-format option is changed from legacy to gql.
Neo4j 2026.01: A new parameter --debug is added as an alias for the --log option.

Configuration settings

Neo4j 2025.12

Enterprise Edition initial.server.allowed_databases and initial.server.denied_databases support database name patterns (wildcards), and the minimum length is reduced from 3 to 1.

Neo4j 2025.06

Enterprise Edition The following metrics are removed from the default value of the server.metrics.filter:

cluster.internal.discovery.memberset.left
cluster.internal.discovery.crdt.gossip_id_data.size
cluster.internal.discovery.crdt.server_data.size
cluster.internal.discovery.crdt.database_data.size
cluster.internal.discovery.crdt.leader_data.size
cluster.internal.discovery.crdt.total_merge_operations
cluster.internal.discovery.crdt.total_update_operations
cluster.internal.discovery.gossip.incoming_queue_size
cluster.internal.discovery.gossip.total_received_data
cluster.internal.discovery.gossip.total_sent_data
cluster.internal.discovery.gossip.uncontactable_members_exist

Neo4j 2025.03

Enterprise Edition The default value of the server.metrics.filter is changed.

The included neo4j.count metrics class replaces the deprecated ids_in_use metrics.
For more information, see Monitoring → Metrics reference and the tables Database data count metrics and Database data metrics respectively.

SSL framework

Neo4j 2025.10

The Java 21 default cipher suites that use insecure CBC-based ciphers are removed from Neo4j:

TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256
TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256
TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256

However, you still can use them by explicitly specifying their configuration and referencing them in your setup.

Procedures