About the 26R3 Release

Pre-Release Dates: October 26 & November 2, 2026 | Release Dates: November 20 & December 4, 2026

On this page you can view the schedule for the coming release and the list of features included. Dates are subject to change.

Release Schedule

Release Activity	Wave 1	Wave 2	Details
Pre-Release Begins	October 26	November 2	Pre-release vaults available: Your Veeva Project Manager will contact you with login credentials.
Validation Documents Available	November 2	November 2	Validation Package available on Veeva ComplianceDocs.
General Release	November 20	December 4	Wave 1: 26R3 released to pre-release (VV1-37), limited release (VV1-17), EU pre-release (VV2-2152), and Wave 1 general release (VLT-1216) vaults. Wave 2: 26R3 released to all remaining general release vaults. Updated training available on Veeva Learning.
Pre-Release Ends	January 11, 2027	January 11, 2027	Pre-release environments shut down. Contact your Veeva Project Manager for details.

Release Information

26R3 Release Impact Assessment

(Published October 12, 2026) Analyzes the impact of new features. New versions will be published on Tuesdays and Thursdays if changes to the previous version have occurred.

What's New in 26R3

(Available October 23, 2026) Provides detailed explanations of each feature.

Fixed and Known Issues

26R3 Fixed Issues

(Available November 20, 2026) Documents issues that affected previous versions or pre-release and are fixed in 26R3.

26R3 Known Issues

(Available November 20, 2026) Documents issues introduced in 26R3 which are not yet fixed.

Other Release Information

26R3 Migration Vault Release Impact Assessment (Published October 12, 2026) analyzes the impact of new features.
26R3 Supplemental Vault Release Impact Assessment (Available October 12, 2026) lists Vault Platform features in the 26R3 release that can impact EDC or DQS customers.
26R3 Feature Enablement Details (Available October 23, 2026) includes information on how new features are enabled.
26R3 Maintenance Releases documents fixes for issues that are affecting customers in production environments.

For details about new features in the Vault Platform in 26R3, see the Vault Release Notes .

Pre-Release Information

Pre-Release FAQ answers common questions about “pre-release”.
Known Issues in 26R3 Pre-Release (Available October 26, 2026) lists known issues in the 26R3 pre-release. This page also lists the release notes for any maintenance releases applied to pre-release.

Announcements

New & Updated RIA Columns

The Release Impact Assessment (RIA) columns have been updated to align more closely with the Veeva Vault RIA for a standardized Vault customer experience and a simplified release process.

The Clinical Data RIA will now include the following new columns: Application Family, Enablement Setting, and Default Impact. The Application column has been split into two columns: Application Family and Application, while the Dependencies column now includes more detailed information. The Default Impact column consolidates the deprecated Day 1 Impact to Sites and Users with Day 1 visibility columns. The Training column has been removed, as users are now automatically enrolled in the What’s New training.

Consistency and alignment between all Vault RIAs allows for a more streamlined experience for customers who are operating multiple applications on the Vault Platform. For more information about the new columns and updated column definitions, refer to the Clinical Data RIA info page.

EDC & DQS Database Encoding Update

In alignment with the Vault Platform, EDC and DQS are transitioning from utf8mb3 (the legacy UTF-8 database standard) to utf8mb4 (the new official UTF-8 standard). This update aligns our infrastructure with modern global encoding requirements, providing full support for emojis, special symbols, and expanded international character sets.

Functional & Data Impact: No impact on existing data or application functionality is expected.
Large Vaults: May require a maintenance window of approximately 30 minutes. Affected customers will be notified 2 weeks in advance.
Smaller Vaults: Will experience a brief maintenance window. Timing details will be published via trust.com.

DQS API Transitioning to a New Versioning Pattern & Vault URL

Starting with 26R3, the DQS API framework is transitioning to align its versioning lifecycle and base URL structure with standard Veeva Vault and EDC API patterns. This update unifies API integrations across Vault applications, providing a more consistent and predictable developer experience.

The following changes also apply to the SFF API endpoints.

1) New DQS API Versioning Pattern

DQS is replacing its previous domain-specific versioning with the Vault and EDC API standard versioning lifecycle.

New DQS API versions will follow the standard pattern for three releases a year: vYY.ReleaseNumber (e.g., v26.1, v26.2, v26.3).

In 26R3, only new and updated API endpoints will follow the new versioning schema. In a future release, we will also move existing API endpoints to the new versioning model.

2) Unified Vault URL Path

To simplify API integration management, DQS is migrating to a unified URL structure. From version v26.3, the Vault URL is used to directly call all DQS API endpoints.

Legacy URL Pattern: https://[DQS-domain]/edcworkbench/api/{version}/[resource]
New URL Pattern: https://[Vault-domain]/api/{version}/dqs/[resource]

Limited legacy path support

Starting with v26.3, any new API endpoints or existing endpoints that are updated will only support the new Vault URL path.

Existing DQS API endpoints or updated endpoints executed with an older version will temporarily continue to support the DQS URL for backwards compatibility.

Note: Limited Release and Pre-Release Vaults will only support the new Vault URL path.

Changes to Responses and Errors

When calling endpoints via the new URL format, your integrations will inherit standard Vault behaviors for responses and errors.

Any API responses that include download or resource URLs, such as the Study File Format (SFF) package download endpoint, will now return relative URL paths (e.g., ”/dqs/api/{version}/sff/packages/…”) instead of full absolute URLs.

DQS will inherit standard Vault-level error messaging and the DQS API now applies the same API Rate Limits as the Vault API. Please refer to: https://general.veevavault.dev/vault-api/references/api-rate-limits.

Additional Information

Release Waves

For the general release, Wave 1 and Wave 2 releases occur 1-2 weeks apart (2 weeks for the R3 release). We release the 26R3 to the Wave 1 general release POD (VLT-1216) during the Wave 1 general release (November 20). We release the 26R3 to the Wave 2 general release PODs during the Wave 2 general release (December 4).

Admin users can confirm which POD their vaults are on from Admin > Settings > General Settings.

If you have further questions about the Wave 1 and Wave 2 process, contact your Veeva Services representative.

Notifications Opt-In

As a valued member of our community, providing you with control over the communications you receive from Veeva is important to us. Please allow us to send you pre-release environment notifications and other industry related information. Contact your vault's administrator to verify that the Product Announcements checkbox is selected for your user profile.

Veeva Connect Communities

Release-related updates will be posted to Veeva Connect, a central hub for product information and a place to ask questions and share knowledge about Veeva products. Product information provided on Veeva Connect includes general release communications, release highlights, and key feature demos.

The links in the list of Vault product communities below will take you to the community and automatically add you to it. If you are not already a member of Veeva Connect, you can register using your company email address. Once registered, in addition to browsing the communities relevant to your role below, click Releases at the top-right of Veeva Connect to view all release-related content.