Neo4j 5 upgrade and migration

Important

It is recommended to read the Introduction before continuing.

Upgrading to 5.x or 5.26 LTS

You can upgrade from any version of Neo4j 5 to any subsequent MINOR or PATCH version, or to the latest 5.26 LTS, by following the instructions in Upgrade to 5.x or 5 LTS.

Special considerations for upgrading to 5.26 LTS

When upgrading to 5.26 LTS, you should consider the following:

Migrate to block format: Starting from 5.23, block format is the recommended format for Enterprise Edition due to its superior performance and scalability. It uses advanced data structures and inlining techniques to enhance data locality, which leads to better resource utilization. Therefore, it is highly-recommended that Enterprise Edition users migrate all databases to block format at their earliest convenience to ensure the best possible performance. block format is the default format for new databases created in 5.23 and later, and is the default format for all databases in 5.26 and later.

From 5.25 onwards, the block format supports token names (including node labels, property keys, and relationship type names) of any length up to the GQL identifier max length of 16,383 characters. Thus, token names must adhere to this length limit when migrating from aligned to block format. For more information, see Operations Manual → Store formats → Changing the store format of existing databases.

standard and high_limit formats are deprecated in 5.23 and will be removed in a future release. For more information, see Operations Manual → Store formats → Format deprecations.
In a cluster, move to discovery service v2: Neo4j provides several mechanisms for cluster members to discover each other and form a cluster based on the configuration and the environment in which the cluster is running, as well as the version of Neo4j being used.

In Neo4j version 5.23, the discovery service v1 was deprecated, and the discovery service v2 was introduced. In the 2025.01 release, discovery service v1 is removed. Therefore, transitioning from v1 to v2 is strongly recommended and must be completed before upgrading to Neo4j 2025.01. For more details, please refer to the Operations Manual → Moving from discovery service v1 to v2.

Migrating databases from Neo4j 4.4 LTS to Neo4j 5.26 LTS

We do not recommend you upgrade a Neo4j 4.4 LTS server to 5.26 LTS. Instead, you should configure the new server and migrate the databases from the old server to the new server.

If you are using Neo4j 4.4, you can migrate your databases to Neo4j 5.26 LTS by following the instructions in Migrate from 4.4 LTS.

Otherwise, you must first migrate your databases to Neo4j 4.4 LTS by following the instructions in the Neo4j 4.4 LTS specific section.