Looker release notes

The Looker extension for VS Code is now generally available, enabling local LookML development and AI-assisted "vibe coding" using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This update introduces an interactive onboarding walkthrough, support for populating workspaces from bare repositories, and enhanced synchronization between local Git branches and Looker Development Mode. Additional improvements include support for OAuth with the Kiro IDE and more secure storage of API client secrets.

The deprecation of the Looker Mobile (Legacy) application has been postponed to January 31, 2027. Starting on January 31, 2027, support for the Looker Mobile (Legacy) app will be discontinued and the app will be unavailable for download from the App Store or Play Store. Although users will still be able to use the Looker Mobile (Legacy) app if they already have it installed, we recommend that you install the non-legacy Looker mobile app.

Looker 26.16 will roll out to Looker (original) instances on the following schedule:

• Expected deployment start: Tuesday, September 8, 2026
• Expected final deployment and download available: Sunday, September 20, 2026

Looker 26.16 is expected to include the following changes, features, and fixes.

An issue has been fixed where IAM administrators on Looker (Google Cloud core) instances failed authentication when the auth_requires_role and strict Group Role Mapping were enabled. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where logging in with a Google Cloud Workforce Identity within an embedded iframe could fail as a result of frame restrictions or because the authentication popup closed before session cookies were established. This feature now performs as expected.

Now available in preview, the Admin Assistant helps you use natural language to manage Looker roles.

The Semantic Search feature is now generally available.

An issue has been fixed where switching to a histogram visualization in an Explore could fail or revert unexpectedly. Additionally, stack resolution on pivoted histograms has been improved. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the alert creation and edit modal displayed Method instead of defaulting to Email as the notification method. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where embedded dashboards with numerous filters caused horizontal container overflow, prevented filters from wrapping across rows, and resulted in clipped tiles during PDF and PNG exports.

An issue has been fixed where custom themes configured as the instance default were not applied to dashboards in view-only mode or during dashboard navigation. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where LookML dashboard URLs that were opened from the search page contained encoded colons (%3A%3A), which prevented filter interactions from updating URL query parameters. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Single Value visualizations and KPI visualizations would not allow creating a comparison against a non-measure table calculation. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where visualization-level filters could not be edited or deleted because of missing popover menus. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where resizing an Explore that contained a Word Cloud visualization could cause the Explore to crash. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where generating LookML for analytic models without selecting any database tables could cause Looker to create views for all database tables and to drop certain properties because of identifier case sensitivity. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where filter context banners and timezone settings were not preserved when generating PNG downloads from drill menus. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where applying pivots to merge queries could cause visualization errors and blank column headers in the results table. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where standalone tile exports from embedded dashboards with filter context could render off-screen or with clipped visualizations in PDF and PNG formats. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where clearing all text from a dashboard note tile failed to persist upon page refresh. This feature now performs as expected.

The BigQuery High Throughput API has been disabled by default to prevent connection errors for environments without bigquery.readsessions.create permissions. Additionally, required JVM flags for JDK 11 environments have been added. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where multi-line prompt text in dashboard chat views caused action buttons (such as the Thinking toggle and Send button) and vertical scrollbars to be misaligned. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where pinned Looks on boards generated broken URLs that redirected to the home page and failed to dynamically reflect title updates. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where selecting a suggestion could reset the dropdown to a loading spinner. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where collapsible navigation items in the Admin panel and the main navigation pane rendered rectangular focus outlines rather than rounded focus indicators during keyboard navigation. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where typed search strings persisted after you selected an autocomplete suggestion in multi-select filters. This feature now performs as expected.

When you duplicate a user-defined dashboard, associated Looker data agent instructions, configurations, and sources are now preserved on the copied dashboard.

Self-service models have been restricted to only their assigned user database connections, preventing unintended instance-wide database connection access.

Boxplot visualizations now render transparent median dividers and borders properly in inverted and dark theme layouts.

OpenJDK 11 will no longer be supported as of January 14, 2027. Customer-hosted instances must upgrade to OpenJDK 21.

Localized data processing for European Union (EU)-based customers now applies to all Conversational Analytics data agents, including agents that are associated with Looker Explores, user-defined dashboards, and LookML dashboards. This support means that localized data processing now applies to all Conversational Analytics in Looker features.

Note: This item was added September 9, 2026.

The Looker Mobile (Legacy) application is no longer available for download from the App Store or Play Store and support for the app has been discontinued. Although users will still be able to use the Looker Mobile (Legacy) app if they already have it installed, we recommend that you install the non-legacy Looker mobile app.

Note: The deprecation of the Looker Mobile (Legacy) application has been postponed to January 31, 2027. This item was updated on September 9, 2026.

From August 24 through August 26, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (original) instances running Looker 26.14.

Looker now supports connections to MongoSQL. Although existing connections to the legacy MongoDB Connector for BI are still fully supported, Looker recommends that you update MongoDB Connector for BI connections to use the MongoSQL dialect.

See the MongoDB documentation Transition from Atlas BI Connector to MongoSQL and the Looker documentation Migrating to MongoSQL for information on migrating from the MongoDB Atlas BI Connector to the newer MongoSQL Interface.

Note: One year before the MongoDB Connector for BI is to be deprecated, customers will be sent a service announcement to that effect. The information will also be reflected in product documentation and release notes.

The Advanced Unused Content Cleanup feature is now generally available.

Looker Continuous Integration (CI) can be triggered from GitLab CI, Bitbucket Pipelines, and GitHub Actions workflows by using the Looker API and the official Looker Python SDK (looker-sdk). For configuration steps and sample scripts, see the Admin settings - Continuous Integration documentation.

Note: This item was added on August 28, 2026 and changed from a non-breaking change to a feature on September 9, 2026.

Now available in preview, the visual modeling canvas lets you connect to BigQuery data sources to build and edit LookML data models using an interactive, drag-and-drop canvas. With the visual modeling canvas, you can visually join tables, define dimensions and measures, preview query results in real time, and publish Explores without writing LookML code.

For more information, see the Using the visual modeling canvas documentation page.

Note: This item was added on September 9, 2026.

Conversational Analytics verified queries, also known as golden queries, are now generally available. You can also now define verified queries in Looker (Google Cloud core) instances.

Now available in preview, model localization is supported for imported projects. By default, Looker uses the locale definitions from the importing project only, if the importing project has locale definitions. However, if you want to merge the locale definitions from an imported project with the locale definitions of the importing project, you can add the import_locale_defs: yesstatement to thelocalization_settings parameter in your importing project's manifest file. See the Localizing your LookML model documentation page for more information.

Note: This item was added on August 31, 2026 and changed from a non-breaking change to a feature on September 9, 2026.

You can now configure Continuous Integration to automatically run CI suites when a dbt Cloud CI job finishes. The CI suite run verifies whether changes in your dbt models will cause SQL errors in your Looker Explores before the dbt changes are deployed.

Now available in preview, the New/Edit Roles Enhancement feature provides a modernized, step-by-step interface for creating and editing roles on the Roles page in the Users section of the Admin panel.

Now available in preview, you can define and chat with data agents on a LookML dashboard. To use this feature, the Conversational Analytics and Enable Dashboard Agents settings must be enabled on the Gemini in Looker Admin page.

Now available in preview, you can define Looker-managed, in-database analytic models directly from existing LookML Explores by using the model_source subparameter of the derived_analytic_model parameter. Looker automatically translates your Explore topology, joins that are defined with foreign_key, dimensions, and measures into in-database analytic models (such as BigQuery Graphs or Snowflake semantic views).

For more information, see the derived_analytic_model parameter reference page.

The Google Maps Enhancements preview feature now includes the following features:

The Dual-axis Map option now supports points and circles. You can now specify a custom map layer by providing a URL to a TopoJSON file.

When the New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview features are enabled, editing a merge query tile on a dashboard now opens the Join data page directly within the dashboard edit canvas, rather than opening a new tab.

The Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard Token usage tab now includes observability information about top users and top conversations by token usage. The tab also now indicates the type of data agent in its observability metrics.

When connecting Looker to your database, you can specify additional Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) parameters. To maintain security, Looker restricts the allowed values for certain parameters. For the JDBC parameters that have a restricted set of allowed values, the allowed values are listed in the "Supported JDBC parameters" section of the database configuration instructions page for your dialect.

Dashboard parameter filters now correctly respect manually restricted option lists when determining default values. This prevents filters from reverting to base LookML defaults that were intentionally hidden from the dashboard's user interface.

Tiles that are on dashboard tabs will now run only when the dashboard tab that they are saved on is opened.

The latest versions in the Looker (Google Cloud core) release channels are beginning deployment as follows:

• Latest version in the Rapid channel: Looker 26.14
• Latest version in the Regular channel: Looker 26.12
• Latest version in the No Channel channel: Looker 26.14

Looker's Continuous Integration is based on the legacy standalone Spectacles service. Looker will continue to integrate and evolve the Spectacles features into Looker's Continuous Integration, and the legacy standalone Spectacles service itself will be discontinued starting November 30, 2026. Existing Spectacles customers will receive an email with details. If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact us at spectacles-support@google.com.

Looker 26.14 will roll out to Looker (original) instances on the following schedule:

• Expected deployment start: Monday, August 10, 2026
• Expected final deployment and download available: Sunday, August 23, 2026

Looker 26.14 is expected to include the following changes, features, and fixes.

An issue has been fixed where users with Admin via IAM privileges on Looker (Google Cloud core) couldn't enable the Looker Marketplace. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where dashboard filters of type: string_filter could spin indefinitely if no suggestions were configured. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where clicking edit for a visualization from a dashboard caused the dashboard tile header to render on top of the Explore, preventing editing. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where LookML drill links and Liquid variables inside table cells could fail to render properly on dashboards and embedded visualizations. This feature now performs as expected.

Now generally available, the Dashboard Tile Limits feature allows admins to set limits on tiles per dashboard and per tab to optimize performance, which is configured on the Content Guardrails page in the Performance Center section of the Admin panel. Note: This item was added on August 13, 2026.

Now generally available, the Granular Dashboard Sizing feature allows dashboard editors to change the size and layout of dashboard tiles with more granularity.

When you first open a dashboard to edit it after the Granular Dashboard Sizing feature has been enabled, the tiles will be in a different configuration because of the new sizing constraints and layout formats. This behavior is expected. Once you have manually reorganized the tiles and saved the dashboard with the new granular layout, that tile arrangement will persist and won't change unexpectedly.

Note: This item was added on August 13, 2026 and updated on August 19, 2026.

The Axis Order options in the Y tab of the visualization editor now support keyboard inputs.

Conversational Analytics data agent editors can now specify whether the agent will show its thinking or debugging information when generating a response.

A Conversational Analytics data agent now displays query results in its thinking rather than in its final response.

The timeout length for Conversational Analytics queries has been increased from two to five minutes. Note: This item was updated on August 7, 2026.

An issue has been fixed where large queries on Snowflake connections could fail with an SSLHandshakeException: No trusted certificate found error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the Show Region Field in Tooltip option was hidden for region maps that were configured without LookML map layer metadata. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the list of Explores in the Conversational Analytics agent's card could be cut off for embed users with longer names. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where users with mixed roles across projects were unable to see and re-authorize OAuth connections for projects where they had viewer-only access. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where a secondary Y-axis could reset its position if a parameter value was updated. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where validating LookML with an empty value_format parameter could result in a 500 internal server error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where modifying table calculations could cause Looker to run a new query rather than pulling results from cache. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where clicking the Fullscreen button while using the Conversational Analytics dashboard caused the chat view to disappear. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where scheduled jobs that were owned by users who authenticated by using Workforce Identity (BYOID) could fail with IAM login failures. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the merged results page could return a 403 error after a period of user inactivity while cookieless embedding was being used. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where some characters were incorrectly displayed as HTML entities. For example," would render as ". This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Looker could generate incorrect SQL when creating a Self-service Explore from a spreadsheet. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the drill modal incorrectly displayed a pivot option for queries that couldn't be pivoted. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where updating the data for a Self-service Explore could fail with a generic error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Timeline visualizations could fail to respect admin color collection overrides. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where visualizations were not respecting internal dashboard theme color collections, which caused custom theme color collections to revert to the defaults.

An issue has been fixed where timeout settings in the Extension SDK could be reset to their default value of 120 seconds. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the items in the Axis Order section in the Y panel of the visualization edit panel were inaccessible to screen readers. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where non-admin user OAuth tokens remained valid even after database connection parameters were updated. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue with column numbers has been fixed that could occur when XLSX results for tiles that used pivots were generated. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed in the Conversational Analytics interface where chats that used deleted agents or Explores could neither be deleted nor restored. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where searching by label in the field picker would fail to find fields where the group_label or group_item_label was set to an empty string. This feature now performs as expected.

Looker now displays a more informative error when a Conversational Analytics conversation fails to load as the result of a network failure. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where LookML dashboards could fail to deploy if the project name exceeded 64 characters. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where modifying a self-service model that was created from a blank canvas could return a Resource already exists error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Waterfall chart visualization configurations could fail to render if the X-axis label rotation was set to an empty, a null, or another undefined value. This feature now performs as expected.

From August 3 through August 5, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (Google Cloud core) instances running Looker 26.12.

Complimentary Data Studio Pro licenses aren't available for Looker (Google Cloud core) instances that are created after August 1, 2026.

Looker Continuous Integration (CI) now supports email alerts. When you create or edit a CI suite, you can enable the Enable email alerts toggle to specify email recipients and select which run statuses will trigger emails (Failed, Error, Passed, or Cancelled). For more information, see Set up alerting.

The custom calendar feature is now generally available.

The Expression Assistant is now generally available.

Localization is now supported for the dimension_group parameter. You can localize the timeframes, intervals, or custom timeframes generated by a dimension group by providing translations in your locale strings files. For more details, see Localizing dimension groups.

The LookML Projects page has been updated with a more performant tabbed layout, which features three tabs: Models and Projects, Pending Projects, and Marketplace Projects.

Looker admins now have the ability to configure a Looker instance to require multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever a user tries to log in by using an email and a password. This feature is enabled by default.

The Table Visualization Improvements feature is now generally available.

You can now use the following features for table visualizations:

• Pagination
• Show/Hide Table Headers
• Table Borders
• Cell Highlighting
• Conditional formatting for string fields

The Enhanced search feature is now generally available.

Now available in preview, the Admin Assistant helps you use natural language to manage Looker roles.

Now available in preview, enhanced observability metrics — including engagement and estimated token usage data — are available for Conversational Analytics on the Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard. To enable this feature, a Looker admin must turn on the Conversational Analytics Agent Token usage setting on the General page in the Preview section of the Admin panel.

Now available in preview, the new Modern User Interface feature enables modernized layouts and design alongside new configuration settings for visualizations and dashboards. When this preview feature is enabled, users can apply a Modern visualization theme that features updated typography and modern, accessible color palettes for improved data legibility. Additionally, a new Modern dashboard style provides a high-density, streamlined design that optimizes data viewing and aligns with Google's latest design standards.

The Insight Assistant now displays the process the assistant uses to generate the response, showing key details in your data that it used to generate the response, and listing the fields from your Explore that it used.

When you chat in Gemini Enterprise with data agents that you create in Looker, agent responses now include charts and visualizations.

From August 3 through August 7, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (original) and Looker (Google Cloud core) instances running Looker 26.12.

Now available in preview, enhanced observability metrics — including engagement and estimated token usage data — are available for Conversational Analytics on the Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard. To enable this feature, a Looker admin must turn on the Conversational Analytics Agent Token usage setting on the General page in the Preview section of the Admin panel.

Now available in preview, Looker admins can review end-user query success rates, rating distributions, and written user feedback in the Responses & Feedback tab on the Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard. This data helps administrators improve system performance, support troubleshooting, and refine data agents.

To enable this feature, a Looker admin must turn on the End User Conversational Analytics (CA) Query Review setting on the General page in the Preview section of the Admin panel. The End User Conversational Analytics (CA) Query Review admin setting is disabled by default.

Specific user query data is visible only for users who have consented to share their query data in their account settings. The End User Conversational Analytics (CA) Query Review user setting is disabled by default.

A localized processing option for Conversational Analytics is now available for European Union (EU) based customers, enabling data processing within the EU jurisdiction by routing traffic through an EU multi-regional endpoint.

Note that the EU multi-region endpoint covers data residency strictly within EU member states and does not include the europe-west2 (London, UK) or europe-west6 (Zurich, Switzerland) regions. Support for the europe-west12 (Turin, Italy) region is also unavailable at this time.

From July 27 through July 30, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (original) instances running Looker 26.12.

Looker admins now have the ability to configure a Looker instance to require multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever a user tries to log in by using an email and a password. This feature is enabled by default.

The custom calendar feature is now generally available.

Localization is now supported for the dimension_group parameter. You can localize the timeframes, intervals, or custom timeframes generated by a dimension group by providing translations in your locale strings files. For more details, see Localizing dimension groups.

Note: This item was added on August 5, 2026.

The Expression Assistant is now generally available.

The Enhanced search feature is now generally available.

Looker Continuous Integration (CI) now supports email alerts. When you create or edit a CI suite, you can enable the Enable email alerts toggle to specify email recipients and select which run statuses will trigger emails (Failed, Error, Passed, or Cancelled). For more information, see Set up alerting.

The LookML Projects page has been updated with a more performant tabbed layout, which features three tabs: Models and Projects, Pending Projects, and Marketplace Projects.

The New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview feature is now enabled by default.

Note: This release note was added on August 21, 2026.

Now available in preview, the new Modern User Interface feature enables modernized layouts and design alongside new configuration settings for visualizations and dashboards. When this preview feature is enabled, users can apply a Modern visualization theme that features updated typography and modern, accessible color palettes for improved data legibility. Additionally, a new Modern dashboard style provides a high-density, streamlined design that optimizes data viewing and aligns with Google's latest design standards.

Now available in preview, verified queries (also referred to as golden queries) are predefined pairs of natural language questions and their exact, corresponding Looker Explore queries that act as verified standards of truth to teach your Explore data agent how to handle complex business requests without guessing.

To enable verified queries, a Looker admin must turn on the Verified Queries setting on the Gemini in Looker admin page. The Conversational Analytics setting must also be enabled for verified queries to be used.

When you chat in Gemini Enterprise with data agents that you create in Looker, agent responses now include charts and visualizations.

The Insight Assistant now displays the process the assistant uses to generate the response, showing key details in your data that it used to generate the response, and listing the fields from your Explore that it used.

A Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered in Looker. An attacker could craft a malicious URL that, when opened by a Looker administrator, would allow the attacker to execute arbitrary scripts on their behalf and potentially compromise the administrator account.

Both Looker-hosted and self-hosted instances were found to be vulnerable.

This issue has already been mitigated for Looker-hosted instances.

What should I do?

For Looker-hosted instances, no action is required.

For self-hosted Looker instances, update your Looker instances as soon as possible. This vulnerability has been patched in all supported versions of Looker for self-hosted instances. The following versions have all been updated to fix this vulnerability:

• Looker 26.8.7 and all later versions
• Looker 26.6.28+
• Looker 26.4.36+
• Looker 26.2.47+
• Looker 26.0.66+
• Looker 25.18.68+
• Looker 25.12.65+
• Looker 25.6.103+

For more information, see CVE-2026-15810.

As of July 13, 2026, Looker reports have been deprecated. If you had previously enabled the preview for Looker reports, be aware of the following:

• You will no longer have the option to create new reports.
• You will lose the ability to view or edit reports that were created during the preview period.

Access to the rest of your Looker content in your instance will remain unaffected and you will continue to have access to Looker as a data source from Data Studio and Data Studio Pro.

You can create ad hoc Explores using Looker's Self-service Explores feature, which lets you upload CSV, XLS, and XLSX files to Looker and then query and visualize the data in a Looker Explore without needing to configure a LookML model or set up Git version control.

Starting in Looker 26.8, Looker supports Java OpenJDK version 21. Looker-hosted instances have been upgraded to OpenJDK 21. Customer-hosted instances should upgrade to OpenJDK 21.

Looker recommends that you transition to new Java updates as they are released. Other versions of Java, Oracle JDK, and OpenJDK aren't supported at this time.