Looker release notes

The latest versions in the Looker (Google Cloud core) release channels are beginning deployment as follows:

• Latest version in the Rapid channel: Looker 26.14
• Latest version in the Regular channel: Looker 26.12
• Latest version in the No Channel channel: Looker 26.14

Looker's Continuous Integration is based on the legacy standalone Spectacles service. Looker will continue to integrate and evolve the Spectacles features into Looker's Continuous Integration, and the legacy standalone Spectacles service itself will be discontinued starting November 30, 2026. Existing Spectacles customers will receive an email with details. If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact us at spectacles-support@google.com.

Looker 26.14 will roll out to Looker (original) instances on the following schedule:

• Expected deployment start: Monday, August 10, 2026
• Expected final deployment and download available: Sunday, August 23, 2026

Looker 26.14 is expected to include the following changes, features, and fixes.

An issue has been fixed where users with Admin via IAM privileges on Looker (Google Cloud core) couldn't enable the Looker Marketplace. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where dashboard filters of type: string_filter could spin indefinitely if no suggestions were configured. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where clicking edit for a visualization from a dashboard caused the dashboard tile header to render on top of the Explore, preventing editing. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where LookML drill links and Liquid variables inside table cells could fail to render properly on dashboards and embedded visualizations. This feature now performs as expected.

Now generally available, the Dashboard Tile Limits feature allows admins to set limits on tiles per dashboard and per tab to optimize performance, which is configured on the Content Guardrails page in the Performance Center section of the Admin panel. Note: This item was added on August 13, 2026.

Now generally available, the Granular Dashboard Sizing feature allows dashboard editors to change the size and layout of dashboard tiles with more granularity. Note: This item was added on August 13, 2026.

The Axis Order options in the Y tab of the visualization editor now support keyboard inputs.

Conversational Analytics data agent editors can now specify whether the agent will show its thinking or debugging information when generating a response.

A Conversational Analytics data agent now displays query results in its thinking rather than in its final response.

The timeout length for Conversational Analytics queries has been increased from two to five minutes. Note: This item was updated on August 7, 2026.

An issue has been fixed where large queries on Snowflake connections could fail with an SSLHandshakeException: No trusted certificate found error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the Show Region Field in Tooltip option was hidden for region maps that were configured without LookML map layer metadata. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the list of Explores in the Conversational Analytics agent's card could be cut off for embed users with longer names. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where users with mixed roles across projects were unable to see and re-authorize OAuth connections for projects where they had viewer-only access. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where a secondary Y-axis could reset its position if a parameter value was updated. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where validating LookML with an empty value_format parameter could result in a 500 internal server error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where modifying table calculations could cause Looker to run a new query rather than pulling results from cache. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where clicking the Fullscreen button while using the Conversational Analytics dashboard caused the chat view to disappear. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where scheduled jobs that were owned by users who authenticated by using Workforce Identity (BYOID) could fail with IAM login failures. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the merged results page could return a 403 error after a period of user inactivity while cookieless embedding was being used. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where some characters were incorrectly displayed as HTML entities. For example," would render as ". This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Looker could generate incorrect SQL when creating a Self-service Explore from a spreadsheet. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the drill modal incorrectly displayed a pivot option for queries that couldn't be pivoted. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where updating the data for a Self-service Explore could fail with a generic error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Timeline visualizations could fail to respect admin color collection overrides. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where visualizations were not respecting internal dashboard theme color collections, which caused custom theme color collections to revert to the defaults.

An issue has been fixed where timeout settings in the Extension SDK could be reset to their default value of 120 seconds. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where the items in the Axis Order section in the Y panel of the visualization edit panel were inaccessible to screen readers. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where non-admin user OAuth tokens remained valid even after database connection parameters were updated. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue with column numbers has been fixed that could occur when XLSX results for tiles that used pivots were generated. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed in the Conversational Analytics interface where chats that used deleted agents or Explores could neither be deleted nor restored. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where searching by label in the field picker would fail to find fields where the group_label or group_item_label was set to an empty string. This feature now performs as expected.

Looker now displays a more informative error when a Conversational Analytics conversation fails to load as the result of a network failure. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where LookML dashboards could fail to deploy if the project name exceeded 64 characters. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where modifying a self-service model that was created from a blank canvas could return a Resource already exists error. This feature now performs as expected.

An issue has been fixed where Waterfall chart visualization configurations could fail to render if the X-axis label rotation was set to an empty, a null, or another undefined value. This feature now performs as expected.

From August 3 through August 5, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (Google Cloud core) instances running Looker 26.12.

Complimentary Data Studio Pro licenses aren't available for Looker (Google Cloud core) instances that are created after August 1, 2026.

Looker Continuous Integration (CI) now supports email alerts. When you create or edit a CI suite, you can enable the Enable email alerts toggle to specify email recipients and select which run statuses will trigger emails (Failed, Error, Passed, or Cancelled). For more information, see Set up alerting.

The custom calendar feature is now generally available.

The Expression Assistant is now generally available.

Localization is now supported for the dimension_group parameter. You can localize the timeframes, intervals, or custom timeframes generated by a dimension group by providing translations in your locale strings files. For more details, see Localizing dimension groups.

The LookML Projects page has been updated with a more performant tabbed layout, which features three tabs: Models and Projects, Pending Projects, and Marketplace Projects.

Looker admins now have the ability to configure a Looker instance to require multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever a user tries to log in by using an email and a password. This feature is enabled by default.

The Enhanced search feature is now generally available.

Now available in preview, the Admin Assistant helps you use natural language to manage Looker roles.

Now available in preview, enhanced observability metrics — including engagement and estimated token usage data — are available for Conversational Analytics on the Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard. To enable this feature, a Looker admin must turn on the Conversational Analytics Agent Token usage setting on the General page in the Preview section of the Admin panel.

Now available in preview, the new Modern User Interface feature enables modernized layouts and design alongside new configuration settings for visualizations and dashboards. When this preview feature is enabled, users can apply a Modern visualization theme that features updated typography and modern, accessible color palettes for improved data legibility. Additionally, a new Modern dashboard style provides a high-density, streamlined design that optimizes data viewing and aligns with Google's latest design standards.

The Insight Assistant now displays the process the assistant uses to generate the response, showing key details in your data that it used to generate the response, and listing the fields from your Explore that it used.

When you chat in Gemini Enterprise with data agents that you create in Looker, agent responses now include charts and visualizations.

From August 3 through August 7, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (original) and Looker (Google Cloud core) instances running Looker 26.12.

Now available in preview, enhanced observability metrics — including engagement and estimated token usage data — are available for Conversational Analytics on the Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard. To enable this feature, a Looker admin must turn on the Conversational Analytics Agent Token usage setting on the General page in the Preview section of the Admin panel.

Now available in preview, Looker admins can review end-user query success rates, rating distributions, and written user feedback in the Responses & Feedback tab on the Conversational Analytics System Activity dashboard. This data helps administrators improve system performance, support troubleshooting, and refine data agents.

To enable this feature, a Looker admin must turn on the End User Conversational Analytics (CA) Query Review setting on the General page in the Preview section of the Admin panel. The End User Conversational Analytics (CA) Query Review admin setting is disabled by default.

Specific user query data is visible only for users who have consented to share their query data in their account settings. The End User Conversational Analytics (CA) Query Review user setting is disabled by default.

A localized processing option for Conversational Analytics is now available for European Union (EU) based customers, enabling data processing within the EU jurisdiction by routing traffic through an EU multi-regional endpoint.

Note that the EU multi-region endpoint covers data residency strictly within EU member states and does not include the europe-west2 (London, UK) or europe-west6 (Zurich, Switzerland) regions. Support for the europe-west12 (Turin, Italy) region is also unavailable at this time.

From July 27 through July 30, 2026, the following features will be automatically enabled for Looker (original) instances running Looker 26.12.

Looker admins now have the ability to configure a Looker instance to require multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever a user tries to log in by using an email and a password. This feature is enabled by default.

The custom calendar feature is now generally available.

Localization is now supported for the dimension_group parameter. You can localize the timeframes, intervals, or custom timeframes generated by a dimension group by providing translations in your locale strings files. For more details, see Localizing dimension groups.

Note: This item was added on August 5, 2026.

The Expression Assistant is now generally available.

The Enhanced search feature is now generally available.

Looker Continuous Integration (CI) now supports email alerts. When you create or edit a CI suite, you can enable the Enable email alerts toggle to specify email recipients and select which run statuses will trigger emails (Failed, Error, Passed, or Cancelled). For more information, see Set up alerting.

The LookML Projects page has been updated with a more performant tabbed layout, which features three tabs: Models and Projects, Pending Projects, and Marketplace Projects.

Now available in preview, the new Modern User Interface feature enables modernized layouts and design alongside new configuration settings for visualizations and dashboards. When this preview feature is enabled, users can apply a Modern visualization theme that features updated typography and modern, accessible color palettes for improved data legibility. Additionally, a new Modern dashboard style provides a high-density, streamlined design that optimizes data viewing and aligns with Google's latest design standards.

Now available in preview, verified queries (also referred to as golden queries) are predefined pairs of natural language questions and their exact, corresponding Looker Explore queries that act as verified standards of truth to teach your Explore data agent how to handle complex business requests without guessing.