What's new in User Experience '26: Streamlined and standardized Constellation hotfix delivery

User Experience Knowledge Share
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This item will be invisible to every end user and a quiet relief to everyone who has ever applied a Constellation hotfix at two in the morning. From ’26, Constellation hotfixes arrive through the same delivery mechanism as every other Pega hotfix.

What it means

Constellation was an exception to the standard hotfix model. Applying a Constellation hotfix meant downloading the package and then manually updating the ConstellationPegaStaticURL Dynamic System Setting so the Platform pointed at the correct CDN build. Miss that step, or have a patch quietly reset it, and Constellation Portals failed to load.

Beginning with Pega Platform ’26, hotfix packages include the correct Constellation CDN URL directly within the download. The exception is gone.

What it does

  • One installation process. The same model used for every other Pega hotfix, which removes the variation that made the Constellation workflow confusing in the first place.
  • No manual DSS updates. Clients no longer need to touch ConstellationPegaStaticURL as part of hotfix installation.
  • Update-safe patch behavior. Because the required DSS resets no longer apply, the risk of a Portal failing to load after a patch or major upgrade is removed. Version updates and patch cycles become more predictable, and a recurring class of configuration drift disappears.

How it works

Constellation hotfixes are distributed using the standard hotfix download mechanism. There is nothing to enable and nothing to migrate.

What to remember

  • Go and delete the runbook step. Any internal upgrade checklist that still says “update ConstellationPegaStaticURL” is now wrong, and a wrong step in a runbook is worse than no step.
  • “Portal went blank after the patch” should stop happening. If you have clients who have hit this, it is worth telling them unprompted — it is the kind of fix people remember.
  • No functional change to Constellation itself. This is delivery plumbing. Nothing about how the UI behaves is affected.
  • Applies from ’26 onward. Environments still on earlier versions keep the manual process until they upgrade.

Technical documentation: What’s new in user experience ’26

Constellation 101
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@popaa thanks for sharing. I have added it to our constellation 101 series!

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