The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the second beta release of PostgreSQL 18 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features when PostgreSQL 18 is made generally available, though some details of the release can change during the beta period.
You can find information about all of the PostgreSQL 18 features and changes in the release notes:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/release-18.html
In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 18 on your systems to help us eliminate bugs and other issues. While we do not advise you to run PostgreSQL 18 Beta 2 in production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release.
Your testing and feedback helps the community ensure that PostgreSQL 18 upholds our standards of delivering a stable, reliable release of the world's most advanced open source relational database. Please read more about our beta testing process and how you can contribute:
https://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta/
To upgrade to PostgreSQL 18 Beta 2 from an earlier version of PostgreSQL,
you will need to use a strategy similar to upgrading between major versions of
PostgreSQL (e.g. pg_upgrade or pg_dump / pg_restore). For more
information, please visit the documentation section on
upgrading.
Fixes and changes in PostgreSQL 18 Beta 2 include:
pg_get_process_memory_contexts() function.pg_dump for tables with complex names.pg_dump and pg_dumpall default behavior to use --no-statistics.
Leave the default for pg_restore and pg_upgrade to be --with-statistics.LOAD $libdir/ works.PQservice() from libpq.Please see the release notes for a complete list of new and changed features:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/release-18.html
The stability of each PostgreSQL release greatly depends on you, the community, to test the upcoming version with your workloads and testing tools to find bugs and regressions before the general availability of PostgreSQL 18. As this is a Beta, minor changes to database behaviors, feature details, and APIs are still possible. Your feedback and testing will help determine the final tweaks on the new features, so please test in the near future. The quality of user testing helps determine when we can make a final release.
A list of open issues is publicly available in the PostgreSQL wiki. You can report bugs using this form on the PostgreSQL website:
https://www.postgresql.org/account/submitbug/
This is the second beta release of version 18. The PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release around September/October 2025. For further information please see the Beta Testing page.