Important
Always upgrade to the latest stable patch release of your release series.
MongoDB versioning has the form X.Y.Z where X.Y refers to the
release series and Z refers to the patch number.
MongoDB is released as two different release series:
Major Releases
Minor Releases
Major Releases
Major Releases are made available approximately once a year, and introduce new features and improvements. Major Releases are supported for MongoDB Atlas and on-premises deployments.
Example versions:
6.07.0
Minor Releases
Minor releases introduce incremental improvements and new features within a major version release cycle. They are as stable as major releases and suitable for production workloads.
Starting with MongoDB 8.2, minor releases will also be available for on-premises deployments (Community and EA) for specific use cases, such as Search, Vector Search, and enhanced Queryable Encryption capabilities.
Example versions:
6.16.26.3
Upgrade Path
To upgrade between minor releases, you must upgrade sequentially through each minor release. You cannot skip minor releases. For example, to upgrade from 8.1 to 8.3, you must first upgrade from 8.1 to 8.2, and then upgrade from 8.2 to 8.3.
To upgrade from a minor release to the next major release, you can:
Upgrade through each minor release to the next major. For example, to upgrade from 8.1 to the next major release, upgrade from 8.1 to 8.2, then from 8.2 to 8.3, and then from 8.3 to the next major release.
Downgrade to the previous major release, and then upgrade to the next major. For example, to upgrade from 8.1 to the next major release, downgrade from 8.1 to 8.0, and then upgrade from 8.0 to the next major release.
Each upgrade or downgrade step requires both a binary upgrade and a FCV upgrade.
Patch Releases
Patch Releases are made available as needed to both Major Releases and Rapid Releases. Patch releases generally include bug fixes and minor improvements.
Example versions:
6.0.1(a Major Release patch version)6.2.1(a Rapid Release patch version)
Release Candidate (RC) Releases
In advance of new Major Releases and Rapid Releases, Release Candidates are made available for early testing. A Release Candidate represents a version of the upcoming release that is stable enough to begin testing, but is not suitable for production deployment.
Example versions:
6.0.0-rc06.0.0-rc16.1.2-rc5
Driver Versions
The version numbering system for MongoDB differs from the system used for the MongoDB drivers.
MongoDB Shell (mongosh)
The MongoDB Shell (mongosh) is released separately
from the MongoDB Server and uses its own version numbering system.
Database Tools
MongoDB Database Tools are released separately from the MongoDB Server and use their own version numbering system.