Django 6.1 release notes - UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Expected August 2026

Welcome to Django 6.1!

These release notes cover the new features, as well as some backwards incompatible changes you’ll want to be aware of when upgrading from Django 6.0 or earlier. We’ve begun the deprecation process for some features.

See the How to upgrade Django to a newer version guide if you’re updating an existing project.

Python compatibility

Django 6.1 supports Python 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14. We highly recommend, and only officially support, the latest release of each series.

What’s new in Django 6.1

Model field fetch modes

The on-demand fetching behavior of model fields is now configurable with fetch modes. These modes allow you to control how Django fetches data from the database when an unfetched field is accessed.

Django provides three fetch modes:

  1. FETCH_ONE, the default, fetches the missing field for the current instance only. This mode represents Django’s existing behavior.

  2. FETCH_PEERS fetches a missing field for all instances that came from the same QuerySet.

    This mode works like an on-demand prefetch_related(). It can reduce most cases of the “N+1 queries problem” to two queries without any work to maintain a list of fields to prefetch.

  3. RAISE raises a FieldFetchBlocked exception.

    This mode can prevent unintentional queries in performance-critical sections of code.

Use the new method QuerySet.fetch_mode() to set the fetch mode for model instances fetched by the QuerySet:

from django.db import models

books = Book.objects.fetch_mode(models.FETCH_PEERS)
for book in books:
    print(book.author.name)

Despite the loop accessing the author foreign key on each instance, the FETCH_PEERS fetch mode will make the above example perform only two queries:

  1. Fetch all books.

  2. Fetch associated authors.

See fetch modes for more details.

Database-level delete options for ForeignKey.on_delete

ForeignKey.on_delete now supports database-level delete options:

These options handle deletion logic entirely within the database, using the SQL ON DELETE clause. They are thus more efficient than the existing Python-level options, as Django does not need to load objects before deleting them. As a consequence, the DB_CASCADE option does not trigger the pre_delete or post_delete signals.

Mailers

The new MAILERS setting supports configuring multiple email backends with different options, similar to existing mechanisms for CACHES, DATABASES, STORAGES, and TASKS:

MAILERS = {
    "default": {
        "BACKEND": "django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend",
        "OPTIONS": {"host": "smtp.example.com", "use_tls": True},
    },
    "marketing": {
        "BACKEND": "example_ses.EmailBackend",
        "OPTIONS": {"region": "us-east-1"},
    },
}

You can select a mailer with the new using argument to email sending functions, or obtain an email backend instance with mail.mailers[alias]. See Sending email for more details.

MAILERS is not yet enabled by default in existing projects. It will replace EMAIL_BACKEND and related EMAIL_* settings in Django 7.0. Until then, the older settings will continue to work but will issue deprecation warnings: see the list of email deprecations below.

You can opt into the new feature at any time before Django 7.0; see Migrating email to mailers. To ease the transition, mail.mailers["default"] works with either MAILERS or the deprecated EMAIL_BACKEND setting defined. The deprecated get_connection() function will also return an instance of the default mailer when MAILERS is defined.

Minor features

django.contrib.admin

  • The admin site login view now redirects authenticated users to the next URL, if available, instead of always redirecting to the admin index page.

  • The admin’s FilteredSelectMultiple widget now uses <optgroup>s to preserve named groups (e.g. choices=[("Group", [("1", "Item")]), ...]).

  • When ModelAdmin.list_select_related is False (the default), the change list now selects only the foreign key fields specified in ModelAdmin.list_display, rather than all foreign key fields. This should improve performance for models with many foreign key fields.

  • The delete_confirmation_max_display option allows customizing how many objects are displayed on admin delete confirmation pages before the remainder is truncated. The default is None (no truncation).

  • In order to improve accessibility of the admin change forms:

    • Form fields are now shown below their respective labels instead of next to them.

    • Help text is now shown after the field label and before the field input.

    • Validation errors are now shown after the help text and before the field input.

    • Checkboxes are an exception to the above changes and continue to be displayed in their original layout.

  • list_display now uses boolean icons for boolean fields on related models.

  • The new location keyword argument of the action() decorator specifies which admin views the action is available on. The action is available on the admin change list page by default. It can also be available on the admin change form. See Controlling where actions are available for details.

  • The new description_plural keyword argument of the action() decorator specifies a human-readable description for actions on the admin change list page. Defaults to the description value. This is useful when the action is available on both the admin change list and admin change form.

django.contrib.admindocs

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django.contrib.auth

django.contrib.contenttypes

  • …

django.contrib.gis

  • The isempty lookup and IsEmpty() database function are now supported on SpatiaLite.

  • The new num_dimensions lookup and NumDimensions() database function allow filtering geometries by the number of dimensions on PostGIS and SpatiaLite.

  • OpenLayersWidget is now based on OpenLayers 10.9.0 (previously 7.2.2).

django.contrib.messages

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django.contrib.postgres

django.contrib.redirects

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django.contrib.sessions

django.contrib.sitemaps

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django.contrib.sites

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django.contrib.staticfiles

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django.contrib.syndication

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Asynchronous views

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Cache

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CSP

  • The new csp_nonce_attr template tag renders the CSP nonce attribute on <script> and <link> elements, or renders a Media object’s assets with the nonce applied, when the csp() context processor is configured. See Nonce usage for details.

  • A new security.W027 system check warns when ContentSecurityPolicyMiddleware is enabled with CSP.NONCE in a CSP policy but django.template.context_processors.csp is not configured.

CSRF

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Decorators

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Email

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Error Reporting

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File Storage

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File Uploads

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Forms

  • The new asset object Stylesheet is available for adding custom HTML-attributes to stylesheet links in form media. See paths as objects for more details.

  • The new constant django.db.models.fields.BLANK_CHOICE_LABEL defines a more accessible and translatable default label for the blank choice in forms, which is appended to most choices lists. The transitional setting USE_BLANK_CHOICE_DASH allows you to revert back to the old default label.

  • FilePathField now provides a set_choices() method to scan the directory at path and refresh the field’s choices. This allows per-request refreshing when called in a form’s __init__().

Generic Views

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Internationalization

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Logging

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Management Commands

  • Management commands now set ArgumentParser's suggest_on_error argument to True by default on Python 3.14, enabling suggestions for incorrectly typed subcommand names and argument choices.

  • The loaddata command now calls m2m_changed signals with raw=True when loading fixtures.

Migrations

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Models

Pagination

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Requests and Responses

Security

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Serialization

  • Subclasses of models defining the natural_key() method can now opt out of natural key serialization by overriding the method to return an empty tuple: (). This ensures primary keys are serialized when using dumpdata --natural-primary.

  • The XML deserializer now raises SuspiciousOperation when it encounters unexpected nested tags.

Signals

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Tasks

  • The task() decorator now accepts **kwargs, which are forwarded to the backend’s task_class.

  • Task and TaskResult instances can now be pickled and unpickled.

Templates

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Tests

URLs

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Utilities

Validators

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Backwards incompatible changes in 6.1

Database backend API

This section describes changes that may be needed in third-party database backends.

  • The DatabaseOperations.adapt_durationfield_value() hook is added. If the database has native support for DurationField, override this method to simply return the value.

  • The DatabaseIntrospection.get_relations() should now return a dictionary with 3-tuples containing (field_name_other_table, other_table, db_on_delete) as values. db_on_delete is one of the database-level delete options e.g. DB_CASCADE.

  • Set the new DatabaseFeatures.supports_inspectdb attribute to False if the management command isn’t supported.

  • The DatabaseFeatures.prohibits_dollar_signs_in_column_aliases feature flag is removed.

  • The DatabaseOperations.binary_placeholder_sql() method now expects a query compiler as an extra positional argument and should return a two-elements tuple composed of an SQL format string and a tuple of associated parameters.

  • The BaseSpatialOperations.get_geom_placeholder() method is renamed to get_geom_placeholder_sql and is expected to return a two-elements tuple composed of an SQL format string and a tuple of associated parameters.

  • Set the new DatabaseFeatures.supports_bit_aggregations attribute to False if the database doesn’t support bitwise aggregations.

django.contrib.admin

  • The wide class is removed, as it was made obsolete by the new layout.

  • The object-tools block is hoisted out of the content block in forms.

  • The undocumented InclusionAdminNode.__init__() now takes the template tag name as the first positional argument.

  • The undocumented ChangeList.has_related_field_in_list_display() method has been replaced with ChangeList.get_select_related_fields().

django.contrib.auth

  • Under ASGI, RemoteUserMiddleware no longer prefixes HTTP_ when looking up custom values in request.META. For example, to send -H "AuthUser": ..., the header attribute should be HTTP_AUTHUSER. This restores the behavior prior to Django 5.2. (The default value of REMOTE_USER is not affected.)

django.contrib.gis

  • Support for PostGIS 3.1 is removed.

  • Support for GEOS 3.8 and 3.9 is removed.

  • Support for GDAL 3.1 and 3.2 is removed.

django.contrib.postgres

  • Top-level elements set to None in an ArrayField with a JSONField base field are now saved as SQL NULL instead of the JSON null primitive. This matches the behavior of a standalone JSONField when storing None values.

Models

  • SQL SELECT aliases originating from QuerySet.annotate() calls as well as table and JOIN aliases are now systematically quoted to prevent special character collisions. Because quoted aliases are case-sensitive, raw SQL references to aliases mixing case, such as when using RawSQL, might have to be adjusted to also make use of quoting.

System checks

  • The check management command now supplies all databases if not specified. Callers should be prepared for databases to be accessed.

Dropped support for PostgreSQL 14

Upstream support for PostgreSQL 14 ends in November 2026. Django 6.1 supports PostgreSQL 15 and higher.

Dropped support for MySQL < 8.4

Upstream support for MySQL 8.0 ends in April 2026, and MySQL 8.1-8.3 are short-term innovation releases. Django 6.1 supports MySQL 8.4 and higher.

Dropped support for MariaDB < 10.11

Upstream support for MariaDB 10.6 ends in July 2026, and MariaDB 10.7-10.10 are short-term maintenance releases. Django 6.1 supports MariaDB 10.11 and higher.

Email

  • Providing fail_silently=True, auth_user, or auth_password to mail sending functions (such as send_mail()) while also providing a connection now raises a TypeError.

  • The undocumented EmailMessage.get_connection() method is no longer used. Defining it in a subclass or trying to call it now causes an error.

  • EmailMessage.send() no longer sets the connection property on the EmailMessage. (This behavior was never documented. The send() method will still use a connection that is set on the message before sending.)

Miscellaneous

  • GenericForeignKey now uses a separate descriptor class: the private GenericForeignKeyDescriptor.

  • The undocumented django.template.library.parse_bits() function no longer accepts the takes_context argument.

  • The minimum supported version of SQLite is increased from 3.31.0 to 3.37.0.

  • The iexact=None lookup on JSONField key transforms now matches JSON null, to match the behavior of exact=None on key transforms. Previously, it was interpreted as an isnull lookup.

  • first() and last() no longer order by the primary key when a QuerySet’s ordering has been forcibly cleared by calling order_by() with no arguments.

  • The File class now always evaluates to True in boolean contexts, rather than relying on the name attribute. The built-in subclasses FieldFile, UploadedFile, TemporaryUploadedFile, InMemoryUploadedFile, and SimpleUploadedFile retain the previous behavior of evaluating based on the name attribute.

  • The undocumented connection() method of log.AdminEmailHandler has been removed and is no longer called. Subclasses overriding AdminEmailHandler.send_mail() should avoid calling connection(). See Replacing get_connection() and connection arguments if specific connection configuration is needed.

  • The internal implementation of BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware has been updated for mailers. If you have subclassed it to customize email sending behavior (as suggested in How to manage error reporting), you may want to review the updates in the base BrokenLinkEmailsMiddleware class.

  • django.http.multipartparser.MultiPartParser now uses strict Base64 validation when decoding encoded request data. Previously, invalid data could be silently ignored or result in empty values. Invalid data now raises MultiPartParserError.

  • django.core.cache.backends.db.DatabaseCache now uses strict Base64 validation when decoding cached values. Invalid Base64 data will raise an exception instead of being silently ignored. Cache values generated by Django are unaffected, as they are always valid Base64. However, existing cache entries containing non-standard or corrupted Base64 data may no longer be readable.

Features deprecated in 6.1

Email

Miscellaneous

  • Calling select_related() with no arguments to select all related fields, is deprecated. Specify the related fields to fetch instead.

  • Setting ModelAdmin.list_select_related to True and returning True from ModelAdmin.get_list_select_related() are deprecated. Specify the related fields to fetch instead.

  • Calling QuerySet.values_list() with flat=True and no field name is deprecated. Pass an explicit field name, like values_list("pk", flat=True).

  • The use of None to represent a top-level JSON scalar null when querying JSONField is now deprecated in favor of the new JSONNull expression. At the end of the deprecation period, None values compile to SQL IS NULL when used as the top-level value. Key and index lookups are unaffected by this deprecation.

  • The django.db.models.fields.BLANK_CHOICE_DASH constant is deprecated in favor of the new constant django.db.models.fields.BLANK_CHOICE_LABEL.

  • The USE_BLANK_CHOICE_DASH transitional setting is deprecated.

  • The undocumented get_placeholder method of Field is deprecated in favor of the newly introduced get_placeholder_sql method, which has the same input signature but is expected to return a two-elements tuple composed of an SQL format string and a tuple of associated parameters. This method should now expect to be provided expressions meant to be compiled via the provided compiler argument.

  • The quote_name_unless_alias() method of SQLCompiler, the type of object passed as the compiler argument to the as_sql() method of expressions, is deprecated in favor of the newly introduced quote_name() method.

  • The email_backend argument of log.AdminEmailHandler is deprecated in favor of the newly introduced using argument.

  • The BitAnd, BitOr, and BitXor classes in django.contrib.postgres.aggregates are deprecated in favor of the generally available BitAnd, BitOr, and BitXor classes.

  • Support for double-dot variable lookups, like {{ book..title }}, is deprecated. This syntax maps to a lookup of the empty string, which is normally a mistake.

  • The default value of the algorithm argument for django.utils.crypto.salted_hmac() and django.core.signing.base64_hmac() is deprecated and will change from "sha1" to "sha256" in Django 7.0. Pass an explicit algorithm to silence the deprecation warning.

  • Overriding ModelAdmin.get_actions() without the new action_location parameter is deprecated.

  • Unpacking or indexing the dictionary values of the ModelAdmin.get_actions() return value is deprecated. Use Action attributes instead.

  • Overriding ModelAdmin.get_action_choices() without the new action_location parameter is deprecated.

Features removed in 6.1

These features have reached the end of their deprecation cycle and are removed in Django 6.1.

See Features deprecated in 5.2 for details on these changes, including how to remove usage of these features.

  • The all parameter for the django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.find() function is removed in favor of the find_all parameter.

  • Fallbacks to request.user and request.auser() when user is None in django.contrib.auth.login() and django.contrib.auth.alogin(), respectively, are removed.

  • The ordering keyword parameter of the PostgreSQL specific aggregation functions django.contrib.postgres.aggregates.ArrayAgg, django.contrib.postgres.aggregates.JSONBAgg, and django.contrib.postgres.aggregates.StringAgg are removed in favor of the order_by parameter.

  • Support for subclasses of RemoteUserMiddleware that override process_request() without overriding aprocess_request() is removed.

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