RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 25.11.03

07 Apr 2026

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 25.11.03 can be downloaded from:

• Download

Installation instructions can be found at:

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

Koha 25.11.03 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 13 enhancements, 68 bugfixes.

System requirements

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

Security bugs

• 41261 XSS vulnerability in opac/unAPI
  

  This change validates the inputs to “unapi” so that any invalid inputs will result in a 400 error or a response containing valid options for follow-up requests.

• 41594 Can access invoice-files.pl even when AcqEnableFiles is disabled
• 42048 Reflected XSS in patron search saved link

Bugfixes

Acquisitions

Other bugs fixed

• 41420 Syntax error in referrer in parcel.tt
  

  This fixes the URL for the “Cancel order and catalog record” link when receiving an order for an invoice – the referrer section of the URL was missing.

Architecture, internals, and plumbing

Critical bugs fixed

• 38426 Node.js v18 EOL around 25.05 release time
• 41617 CSV export from item search results – incorrect spaces after comma separator causes issues
  

  This fixes the CSV export from item search results in the staff interface (Search > Item search> Export select results (X) to CSV).

  It removes extra spaces after the comma separator, which causes issues when using the CSV file with some applications (such as Microsoft Excel).

Other bugs fixed

• 35423 AuthoritiesMarc: Warnings substr outside of string and Use of uninitialized value $type in string eq
• 41043 Use op ‘add_form’ and ‘edit_form’ instead of ‘add’ and ‘edit’
• 41076 Perltidy config needs to be refined to not cause changes with perltidy 20250105
  

  26.05.00

• 41268 Circulation rules script has many conditionals
• 41287 Using locale sorting may have a negative impact on search speeds
  This improves the performance for showing facets when using Elasticsearch, by adding another option “simple alphabetical” to sort facets to the FacetOrder system preference.This improves performance for English language libraries and will display the facets correctly in most cases, unless there are Unicode characters.(Technical note: ‘stringwise’ is basic alphanumeric sorting character by character – diacritics are largely ignored.)
• 41557 LoginFirstname, LoginSurname and emailaddress sent to template but never used
• 41560 Useless (and confusing) id attribute on a couple of script tag
  Removes the id attribute from the script tag (script id=”js”) for two pages in the staff interface, as they are not needed.The two pages changed:
  – ‘Checkout history’ section for a record
  – ‘Circulation history’ for a patron
• 41561 “tab” variable in admin/aqbudgetperiods.pl,tt is not used and should be removed
• 41701 Fix definition of OAI-PMH:DeletedRecord preference in sysprefs.sql

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 41747 xt/js_tidy is failing on ill js files

Authentication

Other bugs fixed

• 33782 OAuth2/OIDC identity providers code is not covered by unit tests

Cataloging

Other bugs fixed

• 34879 ./catalogue/getitem-ajax.pl appears to be unused
• 41475 500 error when placing a hold on records with multiple 773 entries
• 41588 Link from 856$u breaks with leading or trailing spaces
  

  If a 856$u for a record had spaces before or after the URL, the link shown on the record page on the OPAC and staff interface (under ‘Online resources’) did not work.

  Depending on the browser, either nothing happened, or an error was shown that the site wasn’t reachable.

  Examples that previously caused links not to work (without the quotes):
  – ” koha-community.org”
  – “koha-community.org ”
  – ” koha-community.org “

Circulation

Other bugs fixed

• 40134 Fix and optimise ‘Any item’ functionality of bookings
• 41035 bundle_remove click handler in returns.tt has invalid path component “item”
• 41055 Missing accesskey attribute for print button (shortcut P)

  Sponsored by Koha-Suomi Oy

• 41457 Hold history table does not deal with column visibility correctly

Command-line Utilities

Critical bugs fixed

• 41315 Using patron-homelibrary option for overdue notices may not send notices to all branches

ERM

Other bugs fixed

• 41120 Click on New data provider breaks functionality
  

  This fixes adding a new data provider after creating a new data provider (ERM > eUsage > Data providers > New data provider).

  If you created a new data provider, clicked close after the information about the provider was shown, then went to add another new data provider – nothing happened: you got an empty page, and there was an error in the browser developer tools console.

Hold requests

Critical bugs fixed

• 41781 Holds queue builder ( build_holds_queue.pl ) fails if HoldsQueueParallelLoopsCount is greater than 1

I18N/L10N

Other bugs fixed

• 41689 “Staff note” and “OPAC” message types in patron files untranslatable

ILL

Other bugs fixed

• 41204 OpenURL ILL no longer defaults to Standard if FreeForm
• 41465 Unauthenticated request does not display ‘type’ correctly
• 41478 AutoILLBackendPriority – Unauthenticated request shows backend form if wrong captcha
• 41512 ILLCheckAvailability stage table doesn’t render
  

  This fixes creating ILL requests when the ILLCheckAvailability system preference is used – the checking for availability was not completed and the table was not shown.

Notices

Other bugs fixed

• 28308 Select ‘Days in advance’ = 0 for Advance notice effectively disables PREDUE notices
• 39781 Cannot limit by library when creating custom patron email sent via patron details page
  

  This patch updates the Add Message interface in the patron record such that the dropdown for selecting a notice template when sending email or SMS messages will only list notices for all libraries or for the user’s logged-in library. Messages using a template for a specific library will now enqueue successfully.

• 40960 Only generate a notice for patrons about holds filled if they have set messaging preferences
  Currently, if a patron has not set any messaging preferences for notifying them about holds filled, a print notice is still generated.With this change, a notice is now only generated for a patron if their messaging preferences for ‘Hold filled’ are set. This matches the behavor for overdue and hold reminder notices.
• 42083 Email and SMS messages from patron record should have distinct permissions
  This patch removes the ‘send_messages_to_borrowers’ permission and replaces it with ‘send_messages_to_borrowers_email’ and ‘send_messages_to_borrowers_sms,’ allowing users to be limited to sending either email or SMS messages from a patron record. At update, users who previously had ‘send_messages_to_borrowers’ permission will be given only ‘send_messages_to_borrowers_email,’ as SMS messages are a new functionality on 26.05 and not something to which users previously had access.

OPAC

Other bugs fixed

• 23308 Contents of “OpacMaintenanceNotice” HTML escaped on display
• 40822 Custom cover images not displayed in search results

Patrons

Other bugs fixed

• 29768 hidepatronname hides guarantor name on borrower edit screen
  

  If the hidepatronname system preference was set to “Don’t show” it hid the guarantor’s name when:

  • editing the guarantee’s patron record (it shows the guarantor patron’s card number)
  • viewing the guarantee patron’s details page

  With this change, you can now see the guarantor’s name in these areas.

  As this information is viewable by clicking the card number, it doesn’t make much sense to hide the patron name for guarantors and guarantees.

  Sponsored by Koha-Suomi Oy

• 36360 Link ILL requests to surviving patron record when patrons are merged
• 41040 Empty patron search from the header should not trigger a patron search
  

  This fixes the “Search patrons” option in the staff interface menu bar. Currently, clicking “Search patrons” and then the arrow (without entering a value) automatically performs a search.

  With this change, a patron search is now no longer automatic. If you don’t enter anything, or don’t select any options, you are now prompted (using a tooltip) to enter a patron name or card number.

  NOTE: This is a change in behavour from what you may be used to.

• 41752 Guarantor first name and guarantor surname mislabeled in system preferences

Plugin architecture

Critical bugs fixed

• 41684 notices_content hook is not checking if individual plugins are enabled and is reloading plugins

REST API

Other bugs fixed

• 41700 Checkouts note_date has incorrect format in swagger definitions

SIP2

Other bugs fixed

• 41458 SIP passes UID instead of GID to Net::Server causing error
  

  This fixes an error that may occur when starting the SIP server: “…Couldn’t become gid “”: Operation not permitted…”. Koha was passing an incorrect value to the Net::Server “group” parameter.

Searching – Elasticsearch

Critical bugs fixed

• 40966 ‘whole_record’ and ‘weighted_fields’ not passed around

Serials

Other bugs fixed

• 36136 Flatpickr allows selecting date from the past on copied serial subscriptions
• 36466 Incorrect date value stored when “Published on” or “Expected on” are empty
  

  Editing a serial and removing the dates in the “Published on” and “Expected on” fields generated a 500 error (Serials > [selected serial] > Serial collection).

  This fixes the error and:
  – Sets the data in the database to NULL
  – Shows the dates as “Unknown” in the serial collection table for the “Date published” and “Date received” columns
  – Changes any existing 0000-00-00 dates in the database to NULL (for existing installations)

Staff interface

Critical bugs fixed

• 41798 Cannot enable ‘passive’ mode in File Transports for FTP

Other bugs fixed

• 41422 New FilterSearchResultsByLoggedInBranch doesn’t fully translate
  

  This fixes the translatability of the text shown when the FilterSearchResultsByLoggedInBranch system preference is enabled, and also the check and what is shown only works when not translated.

• 41679 Stock rotation repatriation modal can conflict with holds modal

System Administration

Critical bugs fixed

• 41431 Circulation rule notes dropping when editing rule
  

  This fixes editing circulation and fine rules with notes – notes are now correctly shown when editing, and are not lost when saving the rule.

  Previously, if you edited a rule with a note, it was not displayed in the edit field and was removed when the rule was saved.

  Sponsored by Koha-Suomi Oy

Other bugs fixed

• 19690 Smart rules: Term “If any unavailable” is confusing

Task Scheduler

Other bugs fixed

• 37402 Task scheduling fails if you don’t use the correct time format

Templates

Other bugs fixed

• 32285 Punctuation: Completeness of the reproduction code␠:, …
  

  This removes spaces before the colons for the unimarc_field_325h.pl and unimarc_field_325j.pl value builder form field labels.

• 32288 Capitalization: RDA Carrier, etc.

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 40703 Replace data-toggle by data-bs-toggle
• 41340 Better translatability on ‘batch_item_record_modification.inc’
• 41347 Terminology: Item had a reserve waiting
  

  This fixes the terminology for two log viewer messages:
  – “Item had a reserve waiting” to “Hold waiting on item”
  – “Item was reserved” to “Hold placed on item”

• 41586 Spacing problem in display of patron names

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 41764 ISSN hidden input missing from Z39.50 search form navigation
  

  This fixes the Acquisitions and Cataloging Z39.50 search forms so that the pagination works when searching using the ISSN input field.

  When you click the next page of results, or got to a specific result page, the search now works as expected – it remembers the ISSN you were searching for, with “You searched for: ISSN: XXXX” shown above the search results, and search results shown.

  Previously, the ISSN was not remembered, and “Nothing found. Try another search.” was shown, and no further search results were shown.

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

Test Suite

Critical bugs fixed

• 41682 Syspref discrepancies between new and upgraded installs
  

  This fixes several system preferences discrepancies and adds tests, including:

  • Setting options to NULL when options=””
  • Fixing the explanation when different
  • Fixing the wrong order (some rows had options=explanation)
  • Fixing the wrong type “Yes/No” => “YesNo”
  • Removed StaffLoginBranchBasedOnIP: both StaffLoginLibraryBasedOnIP and StaffLoginBranchBasedOnIP are in the database for upgraded installs
  • Adding a description for ApiKeyLog
  • Fixing ‘integer’ vs. ‘Integer’ inconsistency
  • Fixing ‘cancelation’ typo
  • Improving the tests:
    • Compare sysprefs.sql and the database content for options, explanation and type
    • Catch type not defined
    • Catch incorrect YesNo values (must be 0 or 1)

  An example where discrepancies have crept in during upgrades includes warnings in the About Koha > System information – the system preferences had no value (either 1 or 0) in the ‘value’ field:
  * Warning System preference ‘ILLHistoryCheck’ must be ‘0’ or ‘1’, but is ”.
  * Warning System preference ‘ILLOpacUnauthenticatedRequest’ must be ‘0’ or ‘1’, but is ”.
  * Warning System preference ‘SeparateHoldingsByGroup’ must be ‘0’ or ‘1’, but is ”.

Other bugs fixed

• 39745 Wrong system preference ‘language’ in test suite
  

  This fixes several tests so that the correct system preference names are used:
  – language => StaffInterfaceLanguages (name changed in bug 27490)
  – opaclanguages => OPACLanguages (name now uses the correct case)

• 40946 “Aborted connection 42 to db” from Koha/Z3950Responder/ZebraSession.t
• 40947 “Aborted connection 42 to db” from t/db_dependent/www/search_utf8.t
• 41449 Reserves.t may fail when on shelf holds are restricted
• 41710 SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/Search.t does not rollback properly

Tools

Other bugs fixed

• 41163 Circulation logs record issuing branch in database but show logged-in branch in log viewer

Enhancements

Cataloging

Enhancements

• 40031 Creation of a new MARC modification template should redirect to have the template ID in the URL
  

  This updates the URL when adding a new MARC modification template (Cataloging > Batch editing > MARC modification templates). It adds the template ID to the URL so that you can directly link to the template.

  Previously, you had to click Edit actions from the list of templates, and couldn’t directly link to the template to see the actions:
  – Previous URL after adding a template:
  STAFF-INTERFACE-URL/cgi-bin/koha/tools/marc_modification_templates.pl
  – New URL after adding a template:
  STAFF-INTERFACE-URL/cgi-bin/koha/tools/marc_modification_templates.pl?template_id=(template_id)&op=select_template

• 40154 Deleting an item does not warn about an item level hold

  Sponsored by Koha-Suomi Oy

Circulation

Enhancements

• 41539 Include item barcode in waiting hold message on patron record
  

  This enhancement adds the item barcode to the holds waiting information on a patron’s check out and details page.

  This makes it easier for circulation staff to copy the barcode to check the item out when a patron picks it up (where this is the library workflow and a self-service option is not available.

  Before: Title (Item type), Author. Hold place on DD-MM-YY
  After: Title (Item type), Author. (Barcode) Hold place on DD-MM-YY

Hold requests

Enhancements

• 40769 Highlight hold fees when placing a hold from the staff interface
  

  This enhancement adds hold fee information display in the staff interface’s hold
  request interface, bringing it to feature parity with the OPAC.

  The OPAC already shows patrons the fee that will be charged for placing
  a hold, but the staff interface did not display this information when staff
  place holds on behalf of patrons. This creates a transparency gap where
  staff cannot inform patrons about potential charges.

ILL

Enhancements

• 41281 ILL request metadata doesn’t show if falsy

OPAC

Enhancements

• 41655 Local OPAC covers are not displayed in OPAC lists
  

  This fixes a regression where the local cover images were no longer displayed in lists in the OPAC and staff interface. With this fix, the local cover images are back in the lists in both interfaces.

SIP2

Enhancements

• 41214 Cash register should only show if UseCashRegisters sys pref is enabled
  

  This change turns the display of the ‘cash register’ field in SIP2 accounts to become conditional depending on whether the UseCashRegisters sys pref is enabled or not.
  For developers: This changes the hideIn option for VueJS framework resources, now allowing it to be a callback function which is checked in real-time, dictating whether a field is displayed or not.

Staff interface

Enhancements

• 40933 Add SMS support under Add message feature
  

  This new feature allows staff with appropriate permissions, send_messages_to_borrowers, to send SMS messages patrons from the patron details pages.

  Notice templates can be defined, and used for defaults, using the Patrons (custom message) module.

• 41206 Add collection to transfers to receive

Templates

Enhancements

• 39715 Do not quote DataTables options
  

  This patch updates templates so that the options passed to DataTables, via KohaTable, are not quoted. The quotes are not necessary, and are not consistent with official DataTables documentation. This establishes a standard for us to follow in the future.

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 41350 Terminology: Biblio was already issued
  

  This changes the log viewer message “Biblio was already issued” to “An item from this bibliographic record is already checked out.”

  This action is recorded in the logs when AllowMultipleIssuesOnABiblio is set to “Don’t allow” and staff confirm a check-out where a patron has already checked out another item for the record.

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

• 41677 Use template wrapper for tabs: OAI repositories

  Sponsored by Athens County Public Libraries

Tools

Enhancements

• 40905 Past unique holidays not shown when enabling Show past checkbox

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 (80%)
• German (89%)
• Greek (93%)
• Hindi (63%)

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 25.11.03 is

• Release Manager: Lucas Gass
• QA Manager: Martin Renvoize
• QA Team:
  • Marcel de Rooy
  • Martin Renvoize
  • Jonathan Druart
  • Laura Escamilla
  • Lucas Gass
  • Tomás Cohen Arazi
  • Lisette Scheer
  • Nick Clemens
  • Paul Derscheid
  • Emily Lamancusa
  • David Cook
  • Matt Blenkinsop
  • Andrew Fuerste-Henry
  • Brendan Lawlor
  • Pedro Amorim
  • Kyle M Hall
  • Aleisha Amohia
  • David Nind
  • Baptiste Wojtkowski
  • Jan Kissig
  • Katrin Fischer
  • Thomas Klausner
  • Julian Maurice
  • Owen Leonard
• Documentation Manager: David Nind
• Documentation Team:
  • Philip Orr
  • Aude Charillon
  • Caroline Cyr La Rose
• Translation Manager: Jonathan Druart
• Wiki curators:
  • George Williams
  • Thomas Dukleth
• Release Maintainers:
  • 25.11 — Jacob O’Mara
  • 25.05 — Laura Escamilla
  • 24.11 — Fridolin Somers
  • 22.11 — Wainui Witika-Park (Catalyst IT)
• Release Maintainer assistants:
  • 25.11 — Chloé Zermatten
  • 24.11 — Baptiste Wojtkowski
  • 22.11 — Alex Buckley & Aleisha Amohia

Credits

We thank the following libraries, companies, and other institutions who are known to have sponsored
new features in Koha 25.11.03

We thank the following individuals who contributed patches to Koha 25.11.03

We thank the following libraries, companies, and other institutions who contributed
patches to Koha 25.11.03

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 25.11.x-security.

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 07 Apr 2026 14:28:57.