is jenkins still relevant in 2025?

Jenkins is still relevant in 2025, but its role in the CI/CD ecosystem is evolving. Here’s a breakdown based on the latest views and trends:

- **Continued Usage in Enterprises:** Jenkins remains widely used, especially in larger enterprises or organizations with legacy systems. Major companies like Apple, Netflix, and RedHat still incorporate Jenkins in their CI/CD setups, often alongside newer tools. Jenkins is valued for its flexibility, customization, and open-source nature, making it beneficial for environments requiring unique or complex pipelines.

- **Legacy and Learning Value:** Jenkins’ fundamentals are transferrable knowledge. Many recommend learning Jenkins early in a DevOps journey, as it provides foundational CI/CD concepts that make adopting other platforms easier later on.

- **Cloud-Native Shift:** The DevOps landscape is rapidly moving toward cloud-native, managed, and automation-focused solutions (like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, etc.), which require less manual setup and maintenance than Jenkins. These modern tools better integrate with cloud technologies, scale more efficiently, and reduce operational overhead—areas where Jenkins can lag without dedicated upkeep.

- **Modernization Efforts:** Jenkins is not static—it’s actively being modernized and remains part of many real-world workflows. For example, recent updates have aimed at modernizing documentation infrastructure and improving pipeline reliability.

- **Market Position:** Jenkins may now be less fashionable for greenfield (new) projects compared to hot, cloud-first solutions, but its enormous install base and plugin ecosystem mean it’s still a fixture in 2025.

Bottom Line: Jenkins is still very much alive in 2025, especially in enterprise and mixed-tool environments. If your goal is to work in larger organizations, maintain legacy systems, or understand the nuts and bolts of CI/CD, learning Jenkins is still worthwhile. However, for projects emphasizing speed, simplicity, or cloud-native approaches, newer CI/CD tools might be more attractive.