RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 25.05.04

25 Sep 2025

Koha is the first free and open source software library automation
package (ILS). Development is sponsored by libraries of varying types
and sizes, volunteers, and support companies from around the world. The
website for the Koha project is:

• Koha Community

Koha 25.05.04 can be downloaded from:

• Download

Installation instructions can be found at:

• Koha Wiki
• OR in the INSTALL files that come in the tarball

Koha 25.05.04 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 37 enhancements, 88 bugfixes.

System requirements

You can learn about the system components (like OS and database) needed for running Koha on the community wiki.

Security bugs

• 40748 Remote-Code-Execution (RCE) in update_social_data.pl
• 40766 Reflected XSS in set-library.pl

Bugfixes

About

Other bugs fixed

• 40468 Terminology on the About > Licenses page – use US American spelling for license

  This fixes the Koha about > Licenses page to use the US American spelling for license (instead of licence, which is the British English spelling).

• 40692 Wrong color background in Perl modules page

Accessibility

Other bugs fixed

• 40609 Invisible Button Styling in “hint” Container Until Hovered

Acquisitions

Critical bugs fixed

• 40684 Permission error for vendors if user has not full acquisition module permission
• 40870 Fund code is lost when modifying an order in acquisitions

Other bugs fixed

• 36155 Improve performance of suggestion.pl when there are many budgets
• 39980 Vendors pages are broken when using Koha as a Mojolicious application
  

  This fixes vendor pages when running Koha as a Mojolicious application. You couldn’t search for or create vendors (you get a page not found error). (This is related to bug 38010 – Migrate vendors to Vue, added to Koha 25.05.)

• 40146 Untranslatable actions on vendor

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40483 Searching vendors by Alias no longer works
• 40861 “Odd number of elements in anonymous hash” warning in serials/acqui-search-result.pl

Architecture, internals, and plumbing

Critical bugs fixed

• 40608 Password not changed if PASSWORD_CHANGE letter absent
• 40671 Expand Koha::Hold->revert_waiting to handle all found statuses

Other bugs fixed

• 35467 NewsLog should be renamed
• 40150 Prevent uncaught error on multiple attempts to ‘define’ on ‘CustomElementsRegistry’ in islands.ts
• 40405 systempreferences.value cannot be set to NULL
• 40585 Prevent crash on biblionumber in addbybiblionumber.pl
• 40636 C4::Reserves::CancelExpiredReserves behavior depends on date it is run
• 40641 Patron.pm can create warnings
• 40725 DBRev 23.12.00.053 should be made more resilient
• 40773 Improve build of “vue/dist” files
• 40838 Bookings related built CSS not ignored by Git

Cataloging

Other bugs fixed

• 31460 Merging biblio records with attached item groups losing groups
• 38967 Export to CSV or Barcode file from item search results fail when “select visible rows” and many items are selected

• 40497 Item add form does not respect framework maxlength setting

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

Circulation

Critical bugs fixed

• 40739 Setting TransfersBlockCirc to ‘Don’t block’ does not allow for scanning to continue

  This patch fixes a bug where setting TransfersBlockCirc to ‘Don’t block’ did not allow scanning to continue after the modal pop-up was displayed.

Other bugs fixed

• 40643 circulation.tt attaches event listeners to keypress in a problematic way
• 40644 Bookings biblio checks erroneously if multiple check-outs and bookings exist
• 40678 Choices are not remembered if a wrong transfer modal is generated

  This patchset fixes a bug where the “Drop box mode” and “Forgive overdue charges” checkbox values were not retained when a wrong transfer modal is displayed.

• 40679 Existing holds toolbar goes wonky if you select ‘del’ from priority dropdown
  Fixes a problem in the UI that would make the toolbar look wrong when ‘del’ is selected in the priority dropdown on reserve/request.tt
• 40689 “Lost status” and “Damaged status” don’t appear on moredetail.pl if user can’t update them
• 40690 Checkout status doesn’t appear on moredetail.pl if item is not checked out
• 40708 Increase accuracy and accessibility of checkin errors
• 40709 Status filter will display in wrong column if item-level_itypes is set to bibliographic record

Database

Other bugs fixed

• 38906 REGEXP_REPLACE not in MySQL < 5.7b DB update 24.06.00.064 fails

ERM

Critical bugs fixed

• 40774 EBSCO Packages search box is missing

Hold requests

Critical bugs fixed

• 40755 Hold cancellation requests cause error 500 on holds waiting page

Other bugs fixed

• 40331 Extra transfer generated when transfer for hold cancelled due to checkin at incorrect library
• 40515 Mark as lost and notify patron is broken in pendingreserves.pl
• 40586 opac-user, holds-table.inc: Include on order status when item.notforloan < 0
• 40672 desk_id not cleared when revert_found() called
• 40747 Placeholder text in the filter row for Publication Details on the holds queue is incorrect

Holidays

Other bugs fixed

• 38633 Calendar – Weekly closures are ignored when setting a yearly repeating holiday

I18N/L10N

Other bugs fixed

• 33856 Inventory tool CSV export contains untranslatable strings

• 37926 Bookings – “to” untranslatable

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40510 Add context to the word “More” in several templates

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

Installation and upgrade (web-based installer)

Other bugs fixed

• 40557 Onboarding enrollment period fields styled badly

  This fixes the ‘Create a patron category’ page in the web installer. It tidies up the layout for the enrolment period – the ‘In months’ and ‘Until date’ fields were further down the page, instead of aligned to the right of enrolment period label.

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

MARC Bibliographic data support

Other bugs fixed

• 40618 The display of the field 255 (Cartographic Mathematical Data) is missing (both in intranet and OPAC)

  Sponsored by Ignatianum University in Cracow

Notices

Other bugs fixed

• 40305 Collected and change variables are inconsistent in controllers and notice templates

  This standardizes the terminology used throughout the payment system to consistently use ‘tendered’ instead of the mixed usage of ‘collected’ and ‘tendered’ that has caused confusion over the years.

  It changes the variable names used in the code, HTML forms, and notices for the point of sale module and patron accounting – there is no change to the terms staff see on the pages in the staff interfaces.

  Note: It changes the variable names used in the RECEIPT and ACCOUNT_CREDIT notices. If you have not made any change to the default notices, they will automatically be updated. If you have customized these notices, you will need to manually update them.

OPAC

Other bugs fixed

• 38455 UNIMARC XSLT Music incipit (036) try to display field 031 (as in MARC21)
• 40523 Remove unused export_buttons variable from koha-tmpl/opac-tmpl/bootstrap/js/datatables.js

• 40602 Broken HTML showing in Alert ‘subscriptions’ tab

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40612 Eliminate duplicate element id in OPAC language menus

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40614 Invalid markup in cookie consent modal

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40759 Wrong date format in subscription brief history in OPAC
• 40780 Removing rows on advanced search should not lose focus
• 40782 Selections toolbar buttons should not be focusable when they are inactive
• 40803 Users cannot renew overdue items from ‘Overdue’ tab in account

Patrons

Other bugs fixed

• 36278 Relabel “Gone no address”
• 40566 “Home library” empty on “Recalls history”

  This fixes the recalls history page for a patron – the patron’s home library is now shown in the patron information section in the staff interface (previously, “Home library:” was shown without the patron’s actual home library showing).

• 40807 Quick add form does not include ‘username’ when it is included in BorrowerMandatoryFields

Plugin architecture

Other bugs fixed

• 40812 Move Theke sample plugin repo to Github

REST API

Other bugs fixed

• 36536 Make REST API’s validateUserAndPassword update borrowers.lastseen

  This patch add the option in the ‘TrackLastPatronActivityTriggers’ system preference to update a patron’s ‘Lastseen’ entry when that patron’s username and password are successfully validated via the REST API’s /auth/password/validation endpoint.

  Sponsored by Westlake Porter Public Library

• 40543 pickup_library.branchname embed wrong

Reports

Critical bugs fixed

• 40819 Guided reports select column should not be initialized as select2

SIP2

Other bugs fixed

• 39820 Items with hold cancellation requests should have the hold cancelled when checked in via SIP

  This fixes checking in items using SIP, and there is a hold cancellation request – the hold is now cancelled.

  Before this, it did not cancel the hold and it was still listed under “Holds with cancellation requests” (Circulation > Holds > Holds awaiting pickup).

• 40675 Carriage return in patron note message breaks SIP

Searching

Other bugs fixed

• 39072 Item search shareable link adding selections for similar LOC auth values

Self checkout

Other bugs fixed

• 40763 SCO alert box for for wrong password used alert-info when it should use alert-warning

Staff interface

Critical bugs fixed

• 39930 Saved configuration states on tables are lost overnight
• 40753 DT’s SaveState not working on the orders table

  This fixes the basket order table so that when you close (or reopen) a basket, the columns shown remain the same as the table configuration. Before this fix, if you closed a basket and then reopened it, the table settings columns hidden by default were ignored and all the possible columns were shown.

Other bugs fixed

• 40040 RTL CSS files not loaded in templates; legacy right-to-left.css causing UI issues
• 40565 Column filters on the item search do not work

  This patch fixes a problem that made the column search filters not to work when doing an item search.

• 40645 When adding to a list the ‘list name’ field is cut off
• 40651 Item search custom field selection is not populated in shareable link
• 40734 Libraries additional fields don’t appear when creating a new library
• 40876 DT – Exact search not applied on second attribute for column filters

Templates

Other bugs fixed

• 40591 Typo in fastadd button class

• 40592 Fix incorrect row highlighting on patron checkout history page

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40600 Typo in ILL requests template: “Complete request request”

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

Test Suite

Critical bugs fixed

• 40765 Acquisition tests will fail if order.quantity is set to 0

Other bugs fixed

• 40315 xt/tt_tidy.t generates warnings
• 40858 t/00-merge-conflict-markers.t should only test files part of git repo

Tools

Other bugs fixed

• 39423 Column checkboxes on item batch modification hide incorrect columns

• 40691 CCODE label not includes in case of ‘wrong place’ problem (and maybe others cases) into inventory.pl

  Sponsored by BibLibre

• 40702 Inventory CSV export missing “title” header

Web services

Other bugs fixed

• 36561 Inappropriate permission for “/api/v1/auth/password/validation”

  This change adds a new borrower subpermission “api_validate_password” with the description “Validate patron passwords using the API”. This permission allows API borrower accounts, especially for third-parties, the ability to authenticate users without needing full create-read-update-delete (CRUD) permissions.

Enhancements

Accessibility

Enhancements

• 38642 DataTables expand button has no label

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

Acquisitions

Enhancements

• 38619 UNIMARC prices should also be extracted from 071d

  This enhancement imports the value in 071$d to the price field when adding an item to a basket using the “From a new file” option. Before this, it only imported the value from 010$d and 345$d.

Architecture, internals, and plumbing

Enhancements

• 40058 Move RevertWaitingStatus to Koha::Hold->revert_waiting()
• 40275 Add Koha::Patrons->find_by_identifier()

Cataloging

Enhancements

• 35654 Add option to delete_items.pl to delete record if existing item getting deleted is the only one attached to the bib

  This patch updates the delete_items script to use Koha::Items->search instead of a direct database query.

  Using a –where option that refers to the items table by name such as:
  ./misc/cronjobs/delete_items.pl –where “items.withdrawn = 0”

  will no longer work and result in an error:
  execute failed: Unknown column ‘items.withdrawn’ in ‘where clause’

  Use the –where option without naming the items table instead:
  ./misc/cronjobs/delete_items.pl –where “withdrawn = 0”

  Sponsored by Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing

• 40839 Advanced cataloging editor z39.50 search should include Keyword in Advanced Search options

  This patch makes keyword searching available when performing a z39.50 search via the advanced search modal in the advanced cataloging editor.

Circulation

Enhancements

• 9762 Log circulation overrides

  Summary:
  Koha circulation actions (checkout, renewal, return) previously lacked detailed logging when staff overrode system restrictions, making it difficult to audit and track these important decisions.

  Fix:
  Added comprehensive override logging that captures when staff bypass circulation restrictions:

  • JSON Action Logs: All circulation overrides now log structured data including confirmation codes (DEBT, AGE_RESTRICTION, ON_RESERVE, etc.) and forced override reasons
  • Consistent Format: Standardized JSON logging across all circulation operations (AddIssue, AddRenewal)
  • Enhanced Display: Action log viewer shows human-readable descriptions of overrides (e.g., “Patron is restricted”, “Renewal limit override”)
  • Comprehensive Coverage: Tracks overrides for patron restrictions, age limits, checkout limits, holds conflicts, fine overrides, and more

  Impact:
  Provides complete audit trail for circulation policy overrides, improving accountability and compliance reporting. Librarians can now easily track when and why staff bypassed system restrictions during checkout, renewal, and return operations.

  Technical Details:
  Override information is stored as JSON in action logs with format:
  json
{
"issue": 123,
"itemnumber": 456,
"confirmations": ["DEBT", "AGE_RESTRICTION"],
"forced": ["TOO_MANY"]
}


  Sponsored by OpenFifth and Solutions inLibro inc.

• 23010 If an item is checked out or in transit it should not be able to be marked withdrawn
  

  This enhancement adds a new system preference, PreventWithDrawingItemsStatus. When the system preference is enabled it will prevent items that are in-transit or checked out from being withdrawn.

  * Sponsored by Cuyahoga County Public Library *

• 36455 Default the hold queue link to your logged in library
  This enhancement defaults the holds queue link on the Circulation home page (and corresponding navigation links) to the currently logged in branch. This reduces the number of clicks to run the holds queue for the typical library without adding any additional clicks should the queue need generated for an alternate branch or all branches.

• 36789 Transform a booking into checkout

  Sponsored by Association de Gestion des Œuvres Sociales d’Inria (AGOS) and LMS Cloud

• 40656 bookings/list.tt needs to be refactored

Developer documentation

Enhancements

• 38997 Remove reference to “members” in SendAlerts

ERM

Enhancements

• 39345 Koha must support COUNTER 5.1

  This enhancement adds support to the ERM module for Release 5.1 of the Code of Practice for COUNTER Metrics that came into force in January 2025, with a requirement for reports to be delivered by the 28th of February 2025.

Hold requests

Enhancements

• 37651 biblio->current_holds and item->current_holds do not respect ConfirmFutureHolds
• 40395 Allow selecting multiple holds in patron detail page to perform actions on

  This enhancement adds a ‘checkbox’ column to the patron holds table located on the ‘Holds’ tab on the patron ‘Details’ page and the patron ‘Check out’ page.
  It also reimplements suspending and cancelling multiple holds on these pages from a UI/UX point of view.
  Before, the user was required to check the box under the ‘Delete?’ column for the respective hold and then click a ‘Cancel marked holds’ button alongside a cancellation reason.
  Now, the user selects the holds they want to cancel and click a new ‘Cancel selected holds’ button. This reworked button now shows the hold cancellation modal, becoming more consistent to what happens when cancelling holds in other pages where this action is also possible.
  Suspending multiple holds has received the same treatment, with the additional benefit that is now possible to suspend a set of selected holds, rather than only being able to suspend either a single or all holds.
  This work also serves as preparation for future holds ‘bulk actions’ on these patron pages, now that selecting multiple holds on these pages has been standardized.

MARC Bibliographic data support

Enhancements

• 40071 MARC21 Addition to relator terms in technical notice 2025-06-04

  This enhancement adds a new relator term “waw – Writer of afterword” to the RELTERMS authorized values list (from the MARC21 4 June 2025 technical notice).

  Note: This change only affects new installations. For existing installations, manually update the RELTERMS authorized values list.

• 40072 MARC21 Addition to relator terms in technical notice 2025-04-03
  This enhancement to the RELTERMS authorized values list (from the MARC21 3 April 2025 technical notice):
  – adds a new relator term “wfw – Writer of foreword”
  – removes the deprecated relator term “aui – Author of introduction, etc.”

  Notes:
  1. This change only affects new installations.
  2. For existing installations, manually update the RELTERMS authorized values list to reflect the changes from the technical notice.
  2. As there is a deprecated term (aui):
  – Importing records with a nonexistent value will not delete data from the records. It will simply say “aui (Not an authorized value)”.
  – For existing installations and records, use batch record modification before deleting the deprecated term (aui), where required.

• 40073 MARC21 Addition to relator terms in technical notice 2025-02-06
  This enhancement adds two new relator terms to the RELTERMS authorized values list (from the MARC21 6 February 2025 technical notice):
  – ink – Inker
  – pnc – Penciller

  Note: This change only affects new installations. For existing installations, manually update the RELTERMS authorized values list.

• 40482 bookcover/bookcoverimg class in search results show include more data-attributes for customization
  This enhancement adds data-attributes to the bookcover class in the OPAC and staff interface search results. This will make it easier to customization based on those attributes.

Notices

Enhancements

• 36114 Port default TRANSFERSLIP notice to Template Toolkit syntax
• 39883 NEW_SUGGESTION email notices end up in the patrons notice tab (members/notices.pl) when they should not

  The patch makes it so NEW_SUGGESTION email notices do not show up in a patron’s notice history.

Patrons

Enhancements

• 22632 Add logging of merged patrons

  This enhancement adds details of patron merges to the log viewer (when BorrowersLog is enabled).

• 40251 Icon for self-check user permission

Plugin architecture

Enhancements

• 34978 Add –include and –exclude options to install_plugins.pl to choose the plugins to install

  This enhancement adds new parameters to the install_plugins.pl script to specify which plugins to install.

  New parameters :
  –include (repeatable) install ONLY the plugins specified

  –exclude (repeatable) install all the plugins EXCEPT the ones specified

  The parameters require the full plugin class (e.g. Koha::Plugin::PluginName).

  The parameters cannot be used simultaneously.

• 40653 plugins/run.pl controller drops authentication if logging in to that route

REST API

Enhancements

• 39900 Add public REST endpoint for additional_contents

Reports

Enhancements

• 40425 Guided report – “Next” button on last step is misleading

  This enhancement to quided reports renames the label for the last step from “Next” to “Save” – this reflects the actual behavour.

Searching

Enhancements

• 33646 “Cataloging search” missing important data for not for loan items

Serials

Enhancements

• 37116 Add the option to edit linked serials when editing items

Staff interface

Enhancements

• 27934 Table sorting using title-string option is obsolete
• 37883 Add a filter for staff search results to filter by library

  This enhancement adds the system preference FilterSearchResultsByLoggedInBranch. When turned on this feature will allow librarians to filter search results to only show those belonging to the logged in branch. This selection will be set in the browser’s localStorage.

System Administration

Enhancements

• 39824 Add a direct link to default framework in MARC bibliographic frameworks page

  This patch adds a direct link to default framework from the MARC bibliographic frameworks page.

Templates

Enhancements

• 36095 Improve translation of title tags: OPAC part 2

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 38877 Improve translation of title tags: OPAC part 3

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40606 Remove italics from shelving location in the staff interface

  This enhancement removes the italics formatting from the shelving location in a record’s holdings table, now that it is in its own column. (The formatting was there to differentiate the shelving location from the library name when they were in the same column. This is not necessary anymore.)

  (This is a follow-up to Bug 15461 – Add shelving location to holdings table as a separate column, added in Koha 25.04.)

Test Suite

Enhancements

• 40444 Add a test to ensure all Perl test files use Test::NoWarnings

Tools

Enhancements

• 34561 Move IntranetReportsHomeHTML to HTML customizations

  This enhancement moves the IntranetReportsHomeHTML system preference into HTML customizations. This makes it possible to have language-specific and library-specific content. The option has been renamed StaffReportsHome for better consistency with other HTML customization regions.

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

New system preferences

• AdditionalContentLog
• FilterSearchResultsByLoggedInBranch
• PreventWithdrawingItemsStatus

Deleted system preferences

• IntranetReportsHomeHTML
• NewsLog

Documentation

The Koha manual is maintained in Sphinx. The home page for Koha
documentation is

• Koha Documentation
  As of the date of these release notes, the Koha manual is available in the following languages:

• English (USA)

• French (75%)
• German (95%)
• Greek (95%)
• Hindi (67%)

The Git repository for the Koha manual can be found at

• Koha Git Repository

Translations

Complete or near-complete translations of the OPAC and staff
interface are available in this release for the following languages:

Partial translations are available for various other languages.

The Koha team welcomes additional translations; please see

• Koha Translation Info

For information about translating Koha, and join the koha-translate
list to volunteer:

• Koha Translate List

The most up-to-date translations can be found at:

• Koha Translation

Release Team

The release team for Koha 25.05.04 is

• Release Manager: Lucas Gass

• QA Manager: Martin Renvoize

• QA Team:

  • Andrew Fuerste-Henry
  • Andrii Nugged
  • Baptiste Wojtkowski
  • Brendan Lawlor
  • David Cook
  • Emily Lamancusa
  • Jonathan Druart
  • Julian Maurice
  • Kyle Hall
  • Laura Escamilla
  • Lisette Scheer
  • Marcel de Rooy
  • Nick Clemens
  • Paul Derscheid
  • Petro V
  • Tomás Cohen Arazi
  • Victor Grousset

• Documentation Manager: David Nind

• Documentation Team:

  • Aude Charillon
  • Caroline Cyr La Rose
  • Donna Bachowski
  • Heather Hernandez
  • Kristi Krueger
  • Philip Orr

• Translation Manager: Jonathan Druart

• Wiki curators:

  • George Williams
  • Thomas Dukleth

• Release Maintainers:

  • 25.05 — Paul Derscheid
  • 24.11 — Fridolin Somers
  • 24.05 — Jesse Maseto
  • 22.11 — Catalyst IT (Wainui, Alex, Aleisha)

• Release Maintainer assistants:

  • 25.05 — Martin Renvoize
  • 24.11 — Baptiste Wojtkowski
  • 24.05 — Laura Escamilla

Credits

We thank the following libraries, companies, and other institutions who are known to have sponsored
new features in Koha 25.05.04

We thank the following individuals who contributed patches to Koha 25.05.04

We thank the following libraries, companies, and other institutions who contributed
patches to Koha 25.05.04

We also especially thank the following individuals who tested patches
for Koha

We regret any omissions. If a contributor has been inadvertently missed,
please send a patch against these release notes to koha-devel@lists.koha-community.org.

Revision control notes

The Koha project uses Git for version control. The current development
version of Koha can be retrieved by checking out the main branch of:

• Koha Git Repository

The branch for this version of Koha and future bugfixes in this release
line is 25.05.x.

Bugs and feature requests

Bug reports and feature requests can be filed at the Koha bug
tracker at:

• Koha Bugzilla

He rau ringa e oti ai.
(Many hands finish the work)

Autogenerated release notes updated last on 25 Sep 2025 18:51:29.