Atlassian Bamboo Data Center: no end of life in 2029

Atlassian Bamboo Data Center is not reaching end of life in 2029, so you can stay on it or move your builds to Bitbucket Pipelines on your own schedule. What changes is the license: after March 28, 2029, Bamboo Data Center is sold only through the Bitbucket Hybrid License, which also includes Bitbucket Cloud with Pipelines, and Bamboo switches to read-only without it.

An earlier version of this post said Bamboo would reach end of life with the rest of Data Center. That was wrong, and we have corrected it below.

Is Atlassian Bamboo reaching end of life?

No. Atlassian's Data Center end of life covers Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Crowd Data Center, plus Data Center mobile apps, Atlassian's Data Center apps, and Marketplace apps for those products. They reach end of life on March 28, 2029 at 23:59 PST and become read-only.

Bitbucket Data Center and Bamboo Data Center are not on that list. Atlassian says both continue beyond 2029, because some organizations need to keep source code and CI/CD pipelines self-managed.

How the Bitbucket Hybrid License works

• What it covers: Bitbucket Data Center, Bamboo Data Center, and Bitbucket Cloud with Pipelines, under one subscription.
• Who can get it: only existing Bitbucket Data Center, Bitbucket Server, Bamboo Data Center, and Bamboo Server customers.
• How you get it: when your current subscription ends, you can renew to the Hybrid License. Your Bitbucket and Bamboo Data Center environments stay where they are, and no data transfer is required.

Key dates for Bamboo

• February 15, 2024: support for Bamboo Server ended.
• Early 2027: Atlassian says existing customers can upgrade to the Bitbucket Hybrid License.
• Until March 28, 2029: existing Bamboo Data Center licenses remain available.
• March 28, 2029 at 23:59 PST: Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Crowd Data Center reach end of life. Bamboo Data Center continues, sold only through the Hybrid License.

What read-only means for Bamboo

Atlassian says Bamboo Data Center switches to read-only mode after March 28, 2029 if you have not moved to the Hybrid License. Its knowledge base explains what read-only means when a Bamboo 8 or later license expires:

• Trigger handling is disabled, so new commits and schedules no longer start builds.
• Builds and deployments can no longer be added to the queue.
• Run, Run customized, and Run deployments are disabled.
• Administrators see an expired license warning, other users see a read-only banner, and support is no longer available.

Bamboo switches part of its operations to read-only, so it can no longer queue or run builds and deployments. Bitbucket Data Center goes read-only at the same point without the Hybrid License, and users can no longer push code.

Bamboo vs Bitbucket Pipelines

• Hosting: Bamboo Data Center is self-managed. Pipelines is built into Bitbucket Cloud, so there is no separate CI server to run, but your repositories must be in Bitbucket Cloud.
• Where builds run: Bamboo matches jobs to agents by capability. Pipelines runs each step on Atlassian-managed cloud runners or on self-hosted runners on your own Linux, Windows, or macOS machines. On cloud and Linux Docker runners, each step names the Docker image it runs in, while Windows, macOS, and Linux Shell runners run steps directly on the host.
• How usage is counted: Bamboo licenses are tiered by remote agents, not user seats. Pipelines measures build minutes, weighted by runner size, and builds on self-hosted runners do not count toward build minutes (Premium runner concurrency is billed separately).
• Extensions: Bamboo extends through Marketplace apps. Pipelines uses CI/CD integrations called pipes, and you can create your own.

Which path fits your team

Stay on Bamboo Data Center if builds must run in your own environment for compliance, data sovereignty, or air-gapped reasons, which are the cases Atlassian names for the Hybrid License. Move to Pipelines if you want to stop running build servers and your code can live in Bitbucket Cloud. Because the Hybrid License includes both, some builds can stay in Bamboo while others move.

Staying on Bamboo still takes planning, because the products around it do reach end of life:

• Jira links. If Jira moves to Jira Cloud, connect Bamboo Data Center to it with an application link so build and deployment status still shows on work items.
• Users and groups. Bamboo can get its users and groups from Jira or Crowd. If that source is Jira or Crowd Data Center, decide where Bamboo's users will come from before 2029. We cover the identity side in identity debt in a migration.

How to move from Bamboo to Pipelines

Atlassian's tool is the Bitbucket Pipelines Importer, an open-source command-line tool available as a Docker image. Atlassian announced its Bamboo support in beta on March 31, 2026 and in general availability on June 29, 2026. It has three commands:

• audit scans your Bamboo instance and writes a readiness report, including the exact plugin key of every task it cannot convert.
• forecast reads your historical build times and agent specs, then recommends runner sizes with expected billed minutes.
• migrate converts Bamboo YAML specs into bitbucket-pipelines.yml files for one plan, a group of plans, or the whole instance, including deployment plans.

Know its limits before you estimate. It reads only Bamboo YAML specs, so Java specs and settings Bamboo cannot export to YAML are not migrated. Plugins it does not recognize are left as TODO comments, though Python custom transformers can map a plugin to a pipe or a shell script. Atlassian's guide says to plan manual follow-up on every migrated plan, even when the importer reports success.

1. Inventory plans, agents, and repositories

Run the audit against the whole instance first. Then add what the audit cannot tell you:

• Which plans still run and who owns them. Disabled plans migrate as no-ops, so decide now whether to retire them.
• Every unsupported plugin key, and the team that depends on it.
• Your agents and the capabilities each plan requires.
• Integrations: Jira links, webhooks, artifact stores, and notifications.
• Password variables, and what each one grants access to.

Run forecast over a representative quarter so runner sizes reflect real build times. If your code is not in Bitbucket Cloud yet, move it first with Atlassian's migration assistant for Bitbucket Data Center, or Bitbucket Cloud's repository importer for other hosts.

2. Map build and deployment plans

Generate a baseline with migrate, then map what the tool does not. Each deployment environment becomes a custom pipeline, but the importer cannot recreate the link to the build that produced its artifacts. Rebuild it by deploying in the same pipeline, by running the build as a child pipeline, or by storing artifacts in S3 or Artifactory.

• Branch-specific tasks driven by task conditions become separate branch pipelines.
• Trigger conditions are left as comments to add back by hand, and cron schedules move to scheduled builds in the Bitbucket interface.
• Parent and child plan dependencies become a trigger-pipeline pipe that starts the downstream repository's pipeline.
• Notifications are not migrated. Recreate them with after-script and pipes.
• Pull request checks move into a pull-requests block. Add the Require passing pipeline merge check: on Bitbucket Premium it can block the merge, and on other plans it warns.

3. Replace agents with runners

On cloud runners and Linux Docker runners, the image field replaces capability matching: each step names the Docker image it runs in. Workloads that can run in Atlassian's cloud move to cloud runners, sized from your forecast. Builds that need a private network or machines you control go to self-hosted runners, which do the job Bamboo agents did.

4. Move secrets and variables

The importer does not migrate secrets. Bamboo password variables become secured variables in Bitbucket, set at the workspace, repository, or deployment level, and secured values are hidden in logs. Pipelines also supports OpenID Connect, so a step can reach services such as AWS without a stored credential. The importer maps common built-in Bamboo variables, but check your scripts for others. Rotate every secret during the move and give each one an owner.

5. Test, then cut over

1. Commit each generated bitbucket-pipelines.yml to a feature branch and resolve every TODO comment.
2. Run it and compare results with the same build in Bamboo: artifacts, test results, and deployment targets.
3. Move critical plans in phases. The bamboo-trigger-build pipe lets a pipeline start a Bamboo plan and wait for it.
4. Merge to the main branch, turn on the new pipelines, and disable the Bamboo plan.
5. Record where each old plan went, and train the teams who own each repository.

Where we help

We plan and run Bamboo moves as an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner: the audit, the runner and secrets design, and the cutover. If you keep Bamboo Data Center, we plan your Jira, Confluence, and Crowd moves around it so build links and sign-in keep working. See our migration services and our Bitbucket work. When a plugin needs a custom transformer or a pipe of your own, that is custom development.

Frequently asked questions

Is Atlassian Bamboo end of life?

No. Bamboo Data Center is not part of the Data Center end of life on March 28, 2029. It continues after that date through the Bitbucket Hybrid License, and without that license it switches to read-only.

Is there a Bamboo Cloud?

No. Bamboo is a Data Center product, and Atlassian's Bamboo page names Bitbucket Pipelines as its cloud offering. The Hybrid License includes both, so you can try Pipelines without giving up Bamboo.

What happens to Bamboo Server?

Support for Bamboo Server ended on February 15, 2024. Bamboo Server customers are still eligible for the Bitbucket Hybrid License.

Do I have to move to Bitbucket Pipelines?

Not because of the 2029 date. You can stay on Bamboo Data Center with the Hybrid License, and move when you want to stop running your own build servers.