Release 9.3.0 - Sept 2026

[iancha1992]

Status of Bazel 9.3.0

• Expected first release candidate date: 2026-09-15
• Expected release date: 2026-09-22
• List of release blockers

To report a release-blocking bug, please add a comment with the text @bazel-io flag to the issue. A release manager will triage it and add it to the milestone.

To cherry-pick a mainline commit into 9.3.0, simply send a PR against the release-9.3.0 branch.

Task list:

• Create release candidate
• Check downstream projects
• Create draft release announcement
• Push the release and notify package maintainers
• Update the documentation
• Update the release page

[iancha1992]

Bazel 9.3.0rc1 is now available for those that want to try it out.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/9.3.0rc1
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=9.3.0rc1.

Please test it out and report any issues here as soon as possible.
An early draft of the release notes can be found here.

Thanks!

[dws]

I noticed #31165 when I was trying to build 9.3.0rc1.

[dws]

It appears that #30984 did not make it into 9.3.0. I believe I am seeing this NullPointerException when trying to use 9.3.0rc1 with our repo.

@fmeum FYI...

I tried patching 9.3.0rc1 with these changes -- the commit cherry-picks cleanly -- and confirmed that this addresses the NullPointerExceptions we see in our repo.

[iancha1992]

Bazel 9.3.0rc2 is now available for those that want to try it out.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/9.3.0rc2
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=9.3.0rc2.

Please test it out and report any issues here as soon as possible.
An early draft of the release notes can be found here.

Thanks!

[iancha1992]

It appears that #30984 did not make it into 9.3.0. I believe I am seeing this NullPointerException when trying to use 9.3.0rc1 with our repo.

@fmeum FYI...

I tried patching 9.3.0rc1 with these changes -- the commit cherry-picks cleanly -- and confirmed that this addresses the NullPointerExceptions we see in our repo.

@dws
Bazel 9.3.0rc2 now includes a fix for this and is now available.

You can download it from here: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/tag/9.3.0rc2
If you're using Bazelisk, you can point to this RC by setting USE_BAZEL_VERSION=9.3.0rc2.

[dws]

I'd like to ask for 8b18719 to be cherry-picked into 9.3.0. Looks like it comes in cleanly. This addresses an IOException on Bazel startup in some circumstances.

[iancha1992]

I'd like to ask for 8b18719 to be cherry-picked into 9.3.0. Looks like it comes in cleanly. This addresses an IOException on Bazel startup in some circumstances.

We'll likely include this in 9.4.0 release, which is in November. It does not look like a regression. We're about to release 9.3.0 next week.

cc: @fmeum