Migrating Solutions from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8—A Strategy Update

With the EOL (end of life) of the Camunda 7 CE (Community Edition) in October 2025, we get a lot of requests around migrating existing solutions based on Camunda 7 to Camunda 8.

Camunda 8 is not a direct drop-in replacement for Camunda 7, meaning a simple library swap is insufficient—your solution must be adapted. This post outlines the typical migration journey, available tooling to assist migration, and important timeline considerations.

We have recently adjusted our migration strategy based on learnings from the past year(s), so this information may differ from what you have seen before.

But let’s go step-by-step.

The migration journey

Most of our customers go through the following journey, which is also the basis of our just refreshed migration guide that walks you through that journey in detail.

Some solutions are easier to migrate and may not require a full transition process. If your solution adheres to Camunda best practices, does not require data migration, and does not involve complex parallel run scenarios, migration might get relatively straightforward.

This blog post will not go into all the details of those journeys, which is what the migration guide itself does—but to give you an idea, the “orient yourself” phase describes how to:

• Understand conceptual differences between Camunda 7 and Camunda 8.
• Use the Migration Analyzer to get a first understanding of required changes based on your models.
• Explore code conversion patterns.
• Estimate migration effort and budget project.
• Define your target Camunda version and derive a time plan for migration.
• Leverage consulting services from Camunda or certified partners.

When to migrate?

It goes without saying that any new projects should be started using Camunda 8.

For existing Camunda 7 solutions, consider the following support timeline:

• Camunda 7 CE (Community Edition) will reach EOL in October 2025, with a final release (v7.24) on Oct 14, 2025. No further Camunda 7 CE releases will occur after this date. The GitHub repository will be archived, and issues/pull requests will be closed.
• Camunda 7 EE (Enterprise Edition) customers will continue to receive security patches and bug fixes until at least 2030.

Although there is some urgency to start planning migration, you still have time to execute it effectively.

There is a second aspect to the timeline. Camunda 8 is a completely rearchitected platform, meaning some features are still being reintroduced. If your solution depends on features not yet available, you may need to wait for the appropriate Camunda 8 version. Prominent examples are task listeners (planned for 8.8) or the business key (planned for 8.9). We are further running an architecture streamlining initiative to improve the core architecture, which will be released with Camunda 8.8. This introduces a new, harmonized API. Hence, unless you have time pressure or momentum to lose, we generally recommend waiting for 8.8 to happen and consider 8.8 or 8.9 as ideal candidates to migrate to.

Check the public feature roadmap to see when your required features will be available.

That said, it is important to note that targeting for example the 8.9 release doesn’t mean you wait for it to happen and postpone migration planning. Many preparatory steps—analysis, budgeting, and project planning—should begin as soon as possible. Migration tasks can often be performed in advance or using early alpha versions of upcoming releases.

Migration tooling

To support migration, we have several tools available, most importantly:

• Diagram Converter (available as Saas)
• Google Sheets Template to analyse the results
• Code Migration Detector

These are the tools our consultants are using with great success with customers. The tools are open source (Apache 2.0 license) and can be easily adapted or extended to your environment.

However, we acknowledge that some tools are not as self-explanatory as they should be. We have also seen a growing need for additional migration tooling, which is why we are investing in the following tools, targeted for the Camunda 8.8 (October 2025) release:

• Migration Analyzer: Enhancing user experience around the diagram converter and adding DMN support.
• Data Migrator: Migrates runtime instances (running process instances) and copies audit data (history) from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. (Limited to Camunda 8 running on RDBMS, planned for 8.9 release.)
• Code Converter: A collection of code conversion patterns (e.g., refactoring a JavaDelegate to a JobWorker) with automation guidance (likely provided as OpenRewrite recipes).

These tools aim to simplify and streamline the migration process.

Migrating from Camunda 7 CE (Community Edition)

We regularly also get the question of whether migration from CE is also possible. And of course, it is. It is actually the exact same as for our EE edition.

If you are worried about the timeline because of the EOL of the community edition, you can switch to our Camunda 7 Enterprise Edition now and benefit from the extended support timelines right away.

Where do I get help?

With the updated migration guide, we aim to provide clearer guidance on migration tasks. We will continue improving this guide iteratively—please share your feedback via GitHub or our forum.

You can further leverage:

• Camunda Consulting Services: engage with our consulting team, for example doing a migration evaluation or scoping workshop.
• Camunda partners: Many certified partners now have deep migration expertise—consider reaching out to them.

Next steps

As a Camunda 7 user your next steps towards migration are:

1. Orient yourself and analyze your existing solution. This will help you understand necessary tasks and effort, so you can plan and budget your project. This can ideally be supported by a Camunda consultant or certified Camunda partner. This will also inform your timeline on migration, ideally targeting Camunda 8.8 or 8.9.
2. Migrate your solution, adjusting your models and code.
3. Plan data migration and roll out your migrated solution.

Let’s go!

We know that some of you felt a bit lost with migration in the last year and we are truly sorry for any confusion around the topic. Our priority has been to build the best process orchestration and automation platform in the world—but we fully recognize that supporting existing Camunda 7 users to get to this future is equally critical.

In 2025, migration support will be a top priority, led by a strategic task force headed by Mary Thengvall and myself (Bernd Ruecker). We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible.

Looking forward to discussing migration with you! Join the conversation in our forum.