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Renku Release | September 2025 • Connect from Local VSCode + 2 months left for Renku Legacy

· 3 min read
Laura Kinkead
Laura Kinkead
Renku Product Manager

We're excited to share what's new in Renku this month, including a feature many of you have been asking for, plus some important reminders about the end of Renku Legacy coming up in only 2 months!

tunnel-side-by-side

Work in Your Favorite Local VSCode Setup​

You can now connect to your Renku sessions directly from your local VSCode application! We know many of you prefer working in your customized VSCode environment on your laptop rather than in the browser. Now you can have the best of both worlds: Renku's collaborative compute power with your personalized local development setup.

Getting connected is straightforward - just run a simple start_tunnel command inside your Renku session to establish the connection to your local VSCode. You'll find step-by-step instructions in our documentation.

Renku Legacy and GitLab Shutdowns start in 2 Months​

We have two critical deadlines coming up that require your attention:

Sunsetting Timeline

Renku Legacy Shutdown: October 28, 2025​

Time is running short! Renku Legacy will be shut down in just 2 months on October 28. If you still have projects on the old platform, you need to migrate them before this date to maintain access. The good news? Our built-in migration tool makes this process quick and easy - you'll find built in migration tools on your Renku 2.0 dashboard and on Renku Legacy project pages.

RenkuLab GitLab Shutdown: January 2026​

The second phase of our transition is also approaching. In January 2026, we'll be shutting down the RenkuLab GitLab instance. This means you need to move your code repositories to external git providers like GitHub or GitLab.com (both integrate seamlessly with Renku!). You'll find complete step-by-step migration instructions in our transition guide.

New feature alert: Want your old gitlab.renkulab.io repository links to automatically redirect to your new repository? You can now register your new repository location and we'll set up automatic redirects for you.

We've Moved! RenkuLab's New Home in Microsoft Azure​

Here's some behind-the-scenes news that might interest you: On August 21, RenkuLab successfully moved from Switch Engines to its new home in Microsoft Azure's Switzerland-North datacenter. This was a massive undertaking that our operations team executed brilliantly, resulting in only a few hours of downtime despite months of preparation. Our new home cloud affords us the resource flexibility our users require while also giving us the tools we need to optimize costs.

Curious to learn more about why we made this change or wondering if you can still run your Renku sessions on Switch infrastructure? (spoiler- yes you can!) We've got all the details in our dedicated blog post about the migration.

…and more!​

This blog post covers the highlights from releases 2.6.0 to 2.7.0. For detailed technical release notes and the complete feature list, check out our releases on GitHub.

🐸 Ready to get started? Hop into renkulab.io and get a jumpstart with our documentation.

💬 We love to hear your feedback! Share questions, ideas, and suggestions with us on our forum.

🚀 Curious about what's coming next? Check out our roadmap to see what new features we're working on.