Changes in Pega Platform ‘26 supported platforms
These changes are anticipated in the upcoming Pega ‘26 release.
- Pega User Defined Functions (UDFs) for Reporting and Connect SQL capabilities (for example, pr_read_from_stream) are highly discouraged and unsupported in Staging and Production Environments. However, application developers can continue leveraging them in Development (Production Level – 2) and Quality Assurance (Product Level – 3) environments to expedite development processes.
- Real-time BIX will support Google Cloud Pub/Sub in addition to Kafka.
- Cassandra 5 will be supported for CDH applications.
- Kafka 4.1 servers will be supported in addition to Kafka 3.x.
- Kafka 3.x server support will be deprecated with plans to de-support Kafka 3.x in the upcoming Pega 27.1 release.
Pega GenAI Support
As with Pega ‘24.2 and ‘25, Pega GenAI PremBridge must be integrated into your deployments to use GenAI features like Autopilot or GenAI Connect. In Pega ’26, these features will expand to include the new AI Assistant built into Infinity Studio. The PremBridge service supports use of Pega Cloud options (PremBridge Extend) or use of your own OpenAI-compatible local or cloud-hosted LLM services (PremBridge Local).
Projected Search changes in 2026
These changes are anticipated in upcoming releases during the 2026 calendar year:
- Elasticsearch 9 and OpenSearch 3 support.
Projected changes in 2027
These changes are anticipated during the 2027 calendar year:
- Tomcat 11 support is anticipated in 2027.
- Pega Platform will move to a minimum of Java 21. Java 17 will not be functional once this takes effect.
- Java 25 runtime support will be added.
- Kafka 3.x server support will be removed, requiring Kafka 4.x servers going forward. Kafka 4.2 server is recommended to support Shared Groups.
As always, consult the up-to-date Platform Support Guide and Technology Support Roadmap for current and future technology support profiles for Pega Infinity.
This general information about Pega’s product vision and future direction is for informational purposes only. These statements are not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion.