Current Release Notes for Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service release-notes
The following section outlines the feature release notes for the current (latest) version of Experience Manager as a Cloud Service.
Release Date release-date
The release date of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service current feature release (2026.1.0) is January 29, 2026. The next feature release (2026.2.0) is planned for February 26, 2026.
Maintenance Release Notes maintenance
You can find the latest maintenance release notes here.
AEM Beta Programs aem-beta-programs
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) beta programs are a way for customers to get access to prerelease features and code, provide feedback, and guide the future of AEM.
Benefits of participating
Getting early access to features that Adobe is developing lets customers and partners provide feedback and shape product development. It also helps them prepare to adopt new capabilities before general availability.
Current beta programs
The following sections list active beta and Explorer programs.
Agents in AEM (Explorer program) agents-in-aem-beta-program
Gain early access to powerful, new AEM agentic capabilities across production, governance, optimization, discovery, and development. Your feedback directly shapes Adobe’s roadmap and final features. See Overview of Agents in AEM to learn more.
This program typically lasts 4-6 weeks, but can be tailored to be flexible around your ability to actively participate.
To opt in to participate in this program, email aemagentsteam@adobe.com and include the following details to the extent possible:
- Names and Adobe ID’s of team members who will actively use agents.
- List Specific agents that you or your team will want to use. Or simply say “All Agents.”
Customers selected for participation will be notified directly by Adobe. Participation is subject to eligibility considerations, including customer licensing and limited program capacity. While not all requests can be accommodated initially, additional customers may be considered in future beta waves.
AEM Foundation (Beta programs) aem-foundation-beta-programs
See AEM Foundation beta programs.
Cloud Manager (Beta programs) cloud-manager-beta-programs
See Cloud Manager beta programs.
Experience Manager Sites as a Cloud Service sites
Content MCP Server content-MCP
AEM Cloud Service now includes Content MCP Servers, providing a standardized way for AI-powered experiences to work with AEM content through MCP-compatible tools.
Developers and power users working in chat apps and agent platforms can connect AEM to custom copilots and automations, so content work becomes part of end-to-end business workflows.
AEM provides two servers:
- Read-only Content MCP Server - for retrieving content safely
- Read/Write Content MCP Server - for making changes to content
These MCP servers include tools for working with Pages, Content Fragments, and Assets, and can be used from the following MCP clients: ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and Microsoft Copilot Studio.
Learn more in Using MCP with AEM Cloud Service. For questions or feedback, email aemcs-mcp-feedback@adobe.com.
Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service assets
AI Search
AI Search introduces an intelligent, context-aware search experience that goes beyond traditional keyword matching by understanding the meaning and intent behind user queries. Powered by AI and machine learning, it delivers more accurate results even when queries are phrased differently, contain misspellings, use synonyms, or are submitted in different languages, helping users find relevant content faster with less effort.
For more information, see AI Search in Assets view and Admin view.
Desktop App 3.0.1 release
Desktop App 3.0.1 (December 20, 2025) improves reliability, performance, and stability across key workflows. This release ensures consistent folder naming by fixing sync issues with AEM Author, allows uninterrupted use of the app during active transfers, enhances UI responsiveness through asynchronous processing, optimizes large file transfers with pagination, and resolves stability issues including Author server restarts and crashes during large folder uploads and downloads.
Adobe Asset Link CEP 2026.01.0 release
Adobe Asset Link CEP 2026.01.0 introduces a new Relink missing links option in InDesign that automatically relinks other missing assets from the same AEM folder. The feature matches assets based on filename, significantly reducing manual effort when restoring broken links.
Experience Manager Forms as a Cloud Service forms
Enhancements to the Footnote Placeholder in Adaptive Forms (Foundation Components)
- Added multi-line support with line breaks, enabling clearer and more expressive presentation of footnote content.
- Footnotes now remain persistently visible within the Footnote Placeholder, regardless of the visibility of associated panels, ensuring consistent access to critical information.
New Early Access Features in AEM Forms forms-new-early-access-features
Retrieve values from a JSON array
Expanded custom function capabilities to extract values from JSON arrays, received via an API call, and bind them directly to Adaptive Form fields. You can now develop business logic and rules with minimal manual data mapping.
Run the Associate UI on a Publish instance
You can now run the Associate UI directly on Publish instances. This allows your agents to access the Associate UI and easily personalize communications for your customers.
Experience Manager as a Cloud Service Foundation foundation
Experience Manager as a Cloud Service Foundation Important Notices foundation-notices
Java API Deprecations java-api-deprecation
The deprecated APIs targeting 2/26/2026 removal should no longer be used in code. To prevent deployment blocks, remove API usage before March 26, 2026. Important dates:
- Starting January 26, 2026: Actions Center notification emails are sent weekly per environment as a reminder to remove usage of these APIs.
- February 26, 2026: Cloud Manager pipelines that contain code using these APIs will pause during the Code Quality step. A Deployment Manager, Project Manager, or Business Owner can override the issue to allow the pipeline to proceed.
- March 26, 2026: Cloud Manager pipelines that contain code using these APIs will fail during the Code Quality step, blocking deployments of new code until the usage is removed.
- April 30, 2026: Environments still using these APIs may no longer receive critical Adobe release updates.
See the deprecation article for full details, but for convenience, these APIs are listed below:
org.apache.sling.commons.authorg.apache.felix.webconsoleorg.eclipse.jettycom.mongodborg.apache.abderaorg.apache.felix.http.whiteboardorg.apache.cocoon.xmlch.qos.logbackorg.slf4j.spiorg.slf4j.eventorg.apache.log4jcom.google.commoncom.dreworg.bsonorg.apache.jackrabbit.oak.plugins.bloborg.apache.jackrabbit.oak.plugins.memory
Java 11 Runtime Deprecation java11-runtime-deprecation
Adobe upgraded Stage and Production environments to the higher-performance Java 21 runtime on October 14th, 2025. Starting February 9th (gradual rollout through February 11th), neither the AEM Cloud Service SDK nor any cloud environments will work with Java 11 runtime.
Enforcement of AEM Java Logs Configuration Policy logconfig-policy
AEM Java logs must follow a standard format to ensure reliable monitoring across all customer environments. Custom log configurations—such as changes to log formatting, output files, or default log levels—are no longer supported. Logs must remain directed to the default files, and default log levels for AEM product code must be preserved. See full details in the Logging article.
Any unsupported custom logging overrides are now ignored. Most customers were not impacted and Adobe has contacted customers whose current configuration may be affected.
Please review and update any downstream processes that rely on custom logging behavior. For example:
- If your log forwarding system expects a custom log format, you may need to adjust your ingestion rules.
- If you’ve previously reduced log verbosity by changing log levels, please note that reverting to default levels may increase log volume.
Experience Manager as a Cloud Service Foundation Early Adopter Features foundation-early-adopter
Pause Automatic Maintenance Updates pause-updates
Go‑live days, live events, peak sales—these moments can’t break. Our new self‑service features stop automatic mainteanance updates when it matters, so your teams stay focused.
- Quiet Hours: Block automatic maintenance during set times each day. Ideal for working hours, nightly runs or morning cutovers.
- Update‑Free Period: Block automatic maintenance for a full week. Use it for launches, promos, or yearly freezes.
Email aemcs-update-free@adobe.com to get it activated on your programs.
AEM Edge Functions (Beta Program) edge-functions
AEM Edge Functions (referred to in earlier release notes as Edge Computing) allows you to execute JavaScript at the CDN layer, bringing data processing closer to the end user. This reduces latency and enables responsive, dynamic experiences at the edge.
Common use cases include:
- Personalizing content based on geolocation, device type, or user attributes
- Acting as middleware between the CDN and your origin
- Reformatting responses from third-party APIs (and perhaps aggregating multiple API responses) before delivering them to the browser
- Composing and serving server-rendered HTML at the edge using content stitched from various backends
- Exposing an MCP server for LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude to access custom tools
We have a limited number of opportunities available for either AEM Publish Delivery or Edge Delivery Services projects for live production sites. If you’re interested in participating or want to learn more, please email aemcs-edgecompute-feedback@adobe.com with a brief description of your use case.
Edge Authentication for Edge Delivery Services (Beta Program) edge-authentication
Edge Authentication lets you restrict access to Edge Delivery Services pages to only those who have authenticated with your identity provider (IdP). This is achieved by deploying an OpenID Connect (OIDC) configuration YAML file.
If interested, please email aemcs-edgecompute-feedback@adobe.com with a brief description of your use case and any questions you may have.
Canary Production Deployments to Test Code Before Accepting Live Traffic (Beta Program) canary-beta
Validate a production build with internal-only test traffic before exposing it to end users. Ship to production, route only canary traffic (using a special header), monitor behavior, then either promote to live traffic or roll back—without impacting customers.
Deploy your code releases to production, but restrict it to only internal test traffic before deciding whether to accept live traffic versus rolling back.
Email aemcs-canary-deployments-beta@adobe.com to request access and share feedback.
Snapshots for RDEs (Beta Program) rde-snapshot-program
In beta, Rapid Development Environments (RDEs) now support a feature to take a snapshot of the current state of code and content, which can be restored at a later time. This can be useful when syncing code that may need to be reverted, or when switching between development of different features. It’s also possible to restore just the mutable content as a known starting point for testing.
Please email aemcs-rde-support@adobe.com if there is interest in using and providing feedback on this feature.
AI tooling for IDEs for AEM Java and Dispatcher Development (Beta Program) ai-dev-beta
Java-stack teams are increasingly using AI-assisted development in tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, Visual Studio, and IntelliJ to speed up feature delivery and improve code quality. Join the beta to:
- Share real-world experiences to help shape future Adobe-supported AI capabilities
- Try out IDE tooling that can be used by AI agents to generate and debug AEM code and dispatcher configuration
Email aemcs-java-adopter@adobe.com for more information.
Expanded Application Performance Monitoring (APM) (Alpha program) apm-alpha
For observability, AEM Cloud Service currently supports Adobe-provided New Relic One and customer-managed Dynatrace. As we explore support for additional APM options, please email us at aemcs-apm-beta@adobe.com with your preferred vendor or technology, along with use cases.
Experience Manager Guides guides
You can find a complete list of new and enhanced features of the latest release of Adobe Experience Manager Guides here.
Cloud Manager cloud-manager
You can find a complete list of Cloud Manager monthly releases here.
Migration Tools migration-tools
You can find a complete list of Migration Tools releases here.
Universal Editor universal-editor
You can find a complete list of Universal Editor releases here.
Generate Variations generate-variations
You can find a complete list of Generate Variations releases here.
Experience Cloud Release Notes experience-cloud
You can find information about releases of other Experience Cloud applications here.