Salesforce releases typically involve two components. First, there are the new features that are highlighted in keynotes and release notes. Second, there are the Release Updates. These are changes to existing behavior that Salesforce has signaled for months and is now making mandatory. These updates are not optional, and they will become active automatically on your upgrade weekend.
Production upgrades for Winter ’27 started the weekend of September 4, 2026. The majority of remaining instances will upgrade on October 2, 3, or 10. If your instance was in the first group, these changes are already live. If you are in the October groups, you have a limited time to prepare.
There are five primary Release Updates in Winter ’27. They are ranked here by their potential impact on your operations.
Impact Level: Critical
This update has the highest risk of causing immediate failures if overlooked.
Many organizations use nightly integration jobs that log in with a username, password, and security token. Starting with the Winter ’27 upgrade, these logins will stop working entirely. This could result in failed data syncs and broken integrations by the start of the following business day.
The OAuth Username-Password flow will no longer be supported. This change often affects legacy systems like middleware jobs, ETL tools, custom scripts, or marketing platforms that were configured years ago. Any system sending grant_type=password to your token endpoint will fail after the upgrade.
How to find it: Pull Login History in Salesforce and filter on login type and connected app columns. Look for API logins from integration users. Cross-reference against the connected apps’ OAuth usage page in Setup.
The fix: Migrate to an External Client App using a server-to-server flow, such as client credentials for most integrations or JWT bearer for certificate-based authentication. While the credential swap is simple, identifying all systems that use the old credentials can be time-consuming.
Impact Level: High
In Winter ’27, users can only see their own Profile name unless they have the “View All Profiles” permission. This change can affect more than just the user interface.
Issues may arise in Flow lookups that query profiles across different users, Apex code that references User.Profile.Name for other users, or approval routing based on a submitter’s profile. If users lack the proper permission, these fields will return empty values, which might cause logic to fail or route incorrectly without triggering an error.
This can lead to subtle bugs such as deals being routed to the wrong team or validation rules failing to fire. These issues are difficult to detect without specific testing.
The fix: Avoid granting “View All Profiles” to all users, as this could lead to information leaks. Instead, update your logic to branch based on permission sets or custom permissions. This aligns with Salesforce’s recommended approach for access logic.
Impact Level: Medium
In the past, you could ask Salesforce Support to temporarily disable Email Change Verification for bulk updates. As of Winter ’27, Support is no longer able to provide this service.
The new self-service process requires you to configure a DKIM key or set up Authorized Email Domains. Updates to email addresses on authorized domains will skip the verification process. Organizations planning a rebrand or domain migration should set this up now to avoid delays later.
While this may not break existing functionality today, it could become a blocker during future projects if not addressed.
Impact Level: Medium
A previously delayed update is now being enforced, requiring the removal of instanced URLs in API traffic. If integrations or configuration files still point to legacy URLs, such as na139.salesforce.com, they will stop working in Winter ’27.
This change primarily affects older organizations where instance URLs might have been hardcoded into middleware, scripts, or bookmarks. This audit should be performed alongside your OAuth inventory.
The fix: Audit your integration config files, named credentials, remote site settings, and external credential stores. Replace any legacy instance URLs with your My Domain URL.
Impact Level: Low
Winter ’27 enforces accessibility enhancements for various UI elements, including cards, menus, and modals. These changes only apply when a user views a page at 200% browser magnification or higher.
Custom record pages with specific pixel positioning might render incorrectly at high zoom levels. It is recommended to spot-check your most active record pages at 200% zoom in a preview sandbox.
You can prepare for these changes with a focused plan, preferably before your production upgrade date.
Day 1: Review your sandboxes using the Salesforce Sandbox Preview Guide. Identify which instances are on the preview track and confirm your production upgrade date on Salesforce Trust.
Day 2: Review your Login History to identify integrations using the Username-Password OAuth flow. Create a migration task for each identified system.
Day 3: Search your metadata for profile-name references in Flows, validation rules, Apex, and approval processes. Also, check for hardcoded instance URLs.
Day 4: Configure Authorized Email Domains or DKIM. Begin migrating your high-risk OAuth integrations and replace profile-name logic with custom permissions.
Day 5: Perform regression testing on critical paths in the preview sandbox, including integrations, approval flows, and record pages at 200% zoom.
Then deploy your fixes to production before your upgrade weekend, communicate changes to users, and keep a rollback plan in place for anything reversible.
Release Updates are mandatory. Organizations that proactively inventory their systems and test their fixes in sandboxes will have a smoother transition to Winter ’27.
If you need assistance with this audit, including OAuth inventory or Flow metadata reviews, CRM Forge offers a Winter ’27 Readiness Review. We can help prioritize your remediation efforts before your upgrade date.
