MariaDB 10.6 (LTS): What's New, Release History & Support Lifecycle

What Is New in MariaDB 10.6

MariaDB 10.6 is a long-term support (LTS) release maintained until July 2026. It introduces important improvements in data definition language reliability, query syntax, JSON capabilities, and overall performance while removing older storage engines and deprecated features.

This version strengthens stability with atomic DDL operations and adds modern SQL syntax, making it a solid choice for production systems that need both reliability and new functionality.

Atomic DDL and Reliability

One of the biggest changes in MariaDB 10.6 is the introduction of atomic DDL.

Statements such as CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, RENAME TABLE, DROP TABLE, and DROP DATABASE are now fully atomic. They either complete successfully or are completely rolled back, leaving the database in its original state.

New SQL Syntax and Compatibility

MariaDB 10.6 adds several SQL-standard and compatibility features.

Performance and Optimizer Improvements

Several optimizations improve everyday operations.

• Faster inserts into empty tables.
• Deferred writes to the InnoDB temporary tablespace for better performance.
• Prepared statements no longer resend unchanged resultset metadata.
• Better replication instrumentation merged into Performance Schema.

InnoDB and Storage Changes

Important updates to InnoDB and related components include:

• INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SYS_TABLESPACES now directly reflects the filesystem state. The SYS_DATAFILES table has been removed.
• Only the crc32 checksum algorithm is supported. The old MariaDB 5.5-compatible innodb checksum and none options have been removed.
• Plans to deprecate the COMPRESSED row format were abandoned starting from MariaDB 10.6.6.

Replication Enhancements

Replication features have been extended for better flexibility.

• master_host limit increased to 255 characters and user to 128 characters.
• New binlog_expire_logs_seconds system variable (alias for expire_logs_days) with much higher precision.
• New wsrep_mode variable to enable WSREP-specific features, including experimental Aria replication.
• Support for transitioning a Galera cluster from unencrypted to TLS communication without downtime.

Security and System Changes

Security and system behavior have been improved with these changes:

• --bind-address=hostname now listens on both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
• Support for systemd socket activation.
• GSSAPI authentication plugin now supports Active Directory or local group names and SIDs on Windows.
• The server now checks for configuration file at $MARIADB_HOME/my.cnf.
• utf8 character set is now an alias for utf8mb3 by default (can be changed via old_mode).

Removed Features

The following storage engines have been completely removed in MariaDB 10.6:

• TokuDB storage engine
• CassandraSE storage engine

Several deprecated system variables have also been removed.

Other Notable Additions

Additional improvements include the bundled sys schema (useful views, functions, and procedures for monitoring), new INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEYWORDS and INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SQL_FUNCTIONS tables, and reduced default value for max_recursive_iterations (now 1000).