The X-Road 8 “Spaceship” development started in January 2024 with a proof of concept (PoC) that was completed in five months. At the beginning of the PoC project, the main question was: Can X-Road be transformed into a data space technology in a backwards-compatible manner? Based on the outcome, the short answer was yes.
After the initial phase, the development work concentrated on topics and areas identified during the PoC that required further investigation. The work continued through the second half of 2024. This phase was necessary to ensure that the actual implementation phase could begin with sufficient knowledge of the various technical implementation details.
The actual implementation phase was kicked off at the beginning of 2025. In practice, this meant abandoning the PoC phase code base that had been used to experiment with different approaches and solutions. As a result, the PoC deliverables were less suitable as a basis for a production-level implementation. Therefore, the production-level implementation was initiated by taking the latest X-Road 7 release version (X-Road 7.6.0 at the time) as the foundation and implementing the required changes on top of it.
As of October 2025, X-Road 8 “Spaceship” has reached its first significant milestone — the release of the first X-Road 8 beta version. The official release date is October 23, 2025. The beta includes all the changes implemented so far, but it is still far from the planned feature set of the first X-Road 8 production release. Next, let’s take a closer look at the changes included in the beta!
What’s new in the beta?
The most visible change in the beta is the new UI style. The visual design of the Central Server and Security Server UIs has been updated according to the X-Road 8 visual style guide. The main logic and task flows have remained the same, but the navigation system has been updated, and the overall look and feel has been refreshed.
The most significant changes have taken place under the hood. The beta introduces a more modular software architecture designed for the cloud. The new architecture provides better support for containerised deployments in cloud environments. At the same time, all previous deployment options remain supported, meaning no one is forced to migrate to the cloud with X-Road 8. However, in the beta, support for containerised deployments is limited to the Security Server only. The Central Server, on the other hand, supports only Ubuntu-based deployments.
Better support for containers
In the beta, different Security Server modules are deployed to separate containers, enabling more flexible deployment and scalability options. In practice, a Security Server instance consists of multiple containers that communicate with each other over gRPC:
Configuration Client
Proxy
Signer
Proxy UI API
Backup Manager
Environmental Monitoring
Operational Monitoring
Open Bao
Running the Security Server requires an external database since the database is not included in the X-Road 8 containers. The external database can be a separate database container or some managed database service in the cloud. The setup can be orchestrated using Kubernetes-based container management tools, e.g., k8s.
Supporting Kubernetes for containerised deployments
Kubernetes has been chosen as the orchestration platform supported by X-Road 8. This decision is based on the fact that Kubernetes is the most widely supported container orchestration platform, and several Kubernetes-based services and products are available (e.g., Kubernetes (K8s), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Red Hat OpenShift).
Some X-Road features (e.g., backup and restore) require that the X-Road application is able to interact with the orchestration platform via its APIs to manage the application containers. Unfortunately, there are no unified standards for the APIs, and therefore, each platform has its own implementation, e.g., stopping and starting containers is handled differently by Kubernetes and Docker Compose.
Nevertheless, the X-Road Docker images can be run anywhere, but there are Kubernetes-specific features that will limit X-Road's ease of use with other orchestrators. For example, deploying the Security Server using some other orchestrator is possible, but the application-level backup/restore features are unavailable, and the administrator must implement the backup/restore using different tools.
Changes to the Security Server add-ons
The Security Server supports add-ons that provide additional features on top of the core functionality, e.g., message logging and environmental and operational monitoring are all Security Server add-ons. In X-Road 7, add-ons are implemented as separate add-on packages that can be installed separately. In X-Road 8, separate add-on packages are removed, and all add-ons are packaged with the Security Server core. In this way, Security Server administrators can turn add-ons on/off by updating Security Server's configuration instead of having to install/remove packages. The change simplifies managing add-ons and enables using the same approach in add-on management regardless of the Security Server deployment model (native / container).
Moving configuration data to the database
In the beta, all the possible configuration data has been moved from the filesystem to the database to simplify the backup and restore process of the containerised deployment. This includes configuration properties, signer data, keys, configuration anchor file, etc. Also, PostgreSQL is used as a storage backend for locally deployed OpenBao (OpenBao is used as a secure secret storage in X-Road 8). In this way, the backup of the containerised deployment consists only of the database dump. Instead, in the native deployment, the backup still includes configuration files from the /etc/xroad folder.
What about data spaces?
We decided to carry out the production-level implementation in multiple phases. First, we started by making changes to the existing X-Road architecture and implementing improved support for containers. In addition, the visual layout of the Central Server and Security Server UIs has been updated according to the X-Road 8 visual style guide. After refactoring the foundation, we will add support for the data space protocol stack and the Gaia-X Trust Framework. This approach helps us avoid implementing too many major changes in parallel and allows us to focus more effectively on the ongoing tasks. We are still working on the architectural changes, but the plan is to begin work on data space protocol support within the next few months.
What’s missing from the beta?
Compared to a regular X-Road 7 production release, the beta version lacks some of the usual features. In addition to the data space protocol support, the following features are not supported in the beta:
Central Server and Security Server clustering
Migrating from Security Server Sidecar to X-Road 8 containerised deployment
Upgrading native versions (Ubuntu + RHEL) from X-Road 7 to X-Road 8 beta
Upgrading between different X-Road 8 beta versions
In other words, the beta supports fresh single-instance (non-clustered) installations of the Central Server and Security Server. The Central Server supports Ubuntu 24, while the Security Server supports Ubuntu 24 and containerised deployment on Kubernetes. Also, the beta Security Server is compatible with the X-Road 7 Central Server, which means it can be registered to an existing X-Road 7 instance for testing purposes.
More detailed information on features and limitations will be included in the X-Road 8 beta release notes.
What’s next?
All in all, the development of X-Road 8 is progressing nicely, and we're on track to publish the first production version of X-Road 8 "Spaceship" in 2026, as planned.
Currently, we’re in the first phase of our implementation plan — implementing changes to the existing X-Road architecture. We expect to begin the second phase — adding support for the data space protocol stack and the Gaia-X Trust Framework — in a few months. As the implementation progresses and new milestones are achieved, additional beta versions will be published throughout 2026.
The main reason for publishing this beta version is to allow the X-Road community to try the new version and provide feedback on the implemented changes. Please check the beta version and share your thoughts through your preferred feedback channel. This way, we can ensure that the implemented changes align with the community’s needs and expectations.
More blog posts about X-Road 8 will follow later this year. Stay tuned!