Changes in Neo4j 2025-2026 series

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

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.

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.

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.

Default file locations

Neo4j 2026.02.3

A new directory web is introduced in the Neo4j Community Edition. The web directory contains Neo4j Browser bundled as a .zip file.

The Neo4j Enterprise Edition does not include the web directory; and Neo4j Browser continues to be distributed as a .jar file located in the lib directory.

Logging

Neo4j 2026.04

The directory that the neo4j-admin database import command creates to store information about the import process is moved back to server/logs/.

Neo4j 2026.03

The import log name neo4j-admin-import-yyyy-MM-dd.HH.mm.ss.log has been changed to dbname-yyyy-MM-dd.HH.mm.ss/import.log, as the neo4j-admin database import command creates a new directory.
The path to the directory is changed from server/logs to server/data/imports/.

For details, see Import progress reporting.

Neo4j admin 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.

Neo4j admin import

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.

Neo4j admin 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.

Procedures

Neo4j 2025.12

Cypher 25

  • The dbms.setDefaultAllocationNumbers() procedure accepts an additional input parameter: propertyShardReplicas.

  • The dbms.showTopologyGraphConfig() procedure includes propertyShardReplicas in its returned results.

Seed providers

Enterprise Edition
Neo4j 2026.04

ServerSeedProvider is added to the values of dbms.databases.seed_from_uri_providers. For details, see Create a database from a URI → ServerSeedProvider.

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.