PRO Tip: Summer ’25 and Winter ’26 Release Updates

It's almost time for the Summer '25 release! All orgs should receive it before the end of June. In this article, we'll remind you of the setup tasks you should complete before the release goes live in your org and give you a head start on the Winter '26 release.

Summer '25 Release Updates

A couple of items that were previously announced as enforced in the Summer '25 release were removed from the release notes:

Evaluate Criteria Based on Original Record Values in Process Builder: This has been in the release notes for several years, and been repeatedly delayed before ultimately being removed this time around. It may be that Salesforce has decided that, rather than adjusting buggy Process Builders, customers should instead focus on moving them to Flow before the end-of-support date for Process Builder of December 31, 2025.
Run the Lightning Knowledge Migration Tool: This was removed from the notes because, technically, its due data has passed–users of Classic Knowledge should have completed this before June 1.

These remaining items will be enforced in the Summer '25 release, which will be pushed to orgs in June 2025:

Enable a Modernized Record Experience in Aura Sites: enabling new Lightning Web Component elements in Aura Experience Cloud sites improves performance and accessibility for assistive technologies, but may lead to minor appearance difference such as field shading and the alignment of buttons. Be aware of these changes and if they affect any training materials or other documentation.
Enable Secure Roles Behavior and Update Sharing Group References in Sandboxes: by default, in orgs that have not yet enabled a Digital Experience site, the standard sharing group is Roles and Subordinates. To improve security settings for sites that enable an Experience site, this default group will now be labeled Roles and Internal Subordinates, and will not share records to external users when the site is created. Admins who adjust sharing settings need to be aware of this change, and any custom code that references the old group label will need to be adjusted.
Review and Update Settings to Capture Leads from LinkedIn: Salesforce had previously advised that this change needed to be made before December 16, 2024, but apparently LinkedIn delayed the retirement of its Lead capture APIs. If your org leverages LinkedIn Lead forms, you need to disable your existing integration and change the settings to continue capturing Leads.
Salesforce Platform API Versions 21.0 Through 30.0 Retirement: This is another item that has been on the calendar for several years. Salesforce is retiring API versions older than 30 (which corresponds to the Spring '14 release). When this retirement occurs, making calls to services like the REST or SOAP API and specifying a version older than 30 will begin to fail. This is an uncommon configuration for orgs that do not have large amounts of custom code, so it is likely to have little impact. To be sure, you can enable event logging under Event Monitoring Settings to review API versions being used in your org. Log files generate approximately every 24 hours–you can download the ApiTotalUsage log field from Setup->Event Log File Browser and check for API versions under 30 in column G of the downloaded file.
Verify SAML Integrations: Salesforce continually upgrades its SAML frameworks to increase security, which is good for everybody. But, some upgrades coming in Spring '25 may cause issues with client SAML configurations. Salesforce highly recommends testing SAML configurations in Spring '25 preview sandboxes, which should become available in November or December.

Two additional items will be enabled in the Summer '25 release, depending on your org's settings and environment:

Enable ICU Locale Formats: You've probably gotten many emails about this one by now, and the rollout has admittedly been confusing. In newer orgs, ICU formats are probably already enabled. With this update, Salesforce is converting its backend handling of Locale settings for things like dates, times, and currencies from the Java Development Kit (JDK) format to the ICU format set by the Unicode Consortium (you probably know them as the keepers of 🔥💪👑 ) to comply with industry standards. This may lead to minor adjustments to data presented to users. It could also affect custom Apex code, or unmanaged packages that haven't yet been updated–but all managed Apex packages should have been updated to comply. Originally, Salesforce was going to enforce this update, but after customer and developer feedback, they have deferred a bit. Salesforce attempted to enable ICU formats in all orgs in the Spring '25 release. They will try again in Summer '25. But if your org has any code running in API version 45 or below (code from earlier than February 2019), the enablement will fail. Notably, this includes all NPSP orgs, because NPSP still has a fair amount of this kind of code. Salesforce may try again in Summer '26 but in the meantime, there is not expected to be significant impact.
Update API Requests to Use Your MyDomain Login URL: the implementation of MyDomain was completed in 2022, but Salesforce continued to redirect calls to its APIs that pointed to the old URLs. These redirections will end on June 14, 2025, so double-checking them and updating any that still point to old URLs is a time-sensitive item.

See the video below for more commentary on these changes:

Winter '26 Release Updates

Right now, Winter '26 is a pretty light release. Only four items are currently slated for enforcement in this release that will reach most customers in September or October 2025:

Confirm Verified Email Addresses for Users Created in 2016 and Earlier: this was previously labeled Verify Your Return Email Address for Sender Verification. To comply with increasing email security standards, Salesforce will stop sending emails on behalf of users that have not verified their addresses. Most users verify their email addresses by clicking the activation link to set up their accounts, but this wasn't required for very old user accounts, or for accounts that always use single sign on. You can identify affected users by building a report filtered on the User Verified Email field and send those users the verification email from their User profile. Note that there is no release update in Setup for this item.
Enable Secure Roles Behavior and Update Sharing Group References in Production: this is the same change described in the Summer '25 section, just applied to production orgs. The fixes are the same–adjusting any code that refers to the Roles and Subordinates sharing setting.
Restrict User Access to Run Flows: this closes a potential security loophole that allowed some user accounts that didn't have permission sets or profiles applied to them to use the old FlowSites license to run any Flow in the org. Now, users will explicitly need the Run Flow permission to be applied to either their Profile or a Permission Set to run Flow. You can find this in the App Permissions section.
Update Permissions for Agentforce Service Assistant Users: this is a niche change; if you have users that need access to the Service Assistant, you'll need to assign them the Service Planner User permission set license to ensure they continue to have access. Note that there is no release update in Setup for this item.