How to connect GitHub to Jira Cloud

Linking GitHub to Jira Cloud puts branches, commits, pull requests and deployments on the issues they mention. Whatever app you use, the shape is the same: an app on the Jira side, a GitHub App on the GitHub side, and a connection between the two. This page walks through it, written after installing two of these apps side by side on a real Jira Cloud site on 1 October 2026.

Before you start

• Jira administrator rights on the Jira Cloud site.
• Owner rights on the GitHub organization (or the personal account) that holds the repositories. Both apps we installed ask for it: the official app’s first screen lists “owner permission for a GitHub organization”, and Linkwright refuses to connect an organization for anyone who is not one of its owners.
• Issue keys in your Git activity: CHK-42 in branch names, commit messages or pull request titles. Nothing links without them.

Step 1 — install the Jira app

From your Jira site: Apps › Explore more apps, search for the connector, then Get it now. The free official app is GitHub for Atlassian; alternatives are compared on GitHub for Jira alternatives.

Step 2 — install the GitHub App, on the repositories you choose

The Jira app sends you to GitHub to install its GitHub App on your organization. GitHub then asks which repositories it may access:

• All repositories: simplest, and every future repository is included.
• Only select repositories: pick them one by one. Choose this if some repositories must not appear in Jira, or to try the app on one repository first.

You can change this choice later on GitHub: for an organization, Organization settings › GitHub Apps › Configure; for a personal account, Settings › Applications › Installed GitHub Apps › Configure. A repository added there appears in the app afterwards: within 10 minutes in Linkwright.

Step 3 — connect the organization to the Jira site

Back in Jira, the app’s configuration page lists the GitHub installations you can connect. Pick your organization. From then on:

• GitHub for Atlassian shows the activity of the connected repositories on the issues it mentions.
• Linkwright shows each repository on every project’s settings page (Project settings › Apps › Git repositories). You attach a repository to the projects it belongs to; repositories whose recent commits cite the project are suggested first. A repository feeds only the projects it is attached to.

Step 4 — check it works

Push a commit whose message starts with an issue key, for example CHK-42 Fix login, then open the issue. Expect it in the Development panel within about a minute: on our test site, a commit reached the issue in 5.7 s and Jira’s panel showed it at about 57 s.

If nothing shows up, go through GitHub commits not showing in Jira.

What about commits pushed before the connection?

Both apps catch up some history when a repository is connected. In our side-by-side test on 1 October 2026, for three commits pushed before the connection (two on the default branch, one on a feature branch), the official app caught up all three; Linkwright caught up the two on the default branch, and the third once it was updated the same day to read the commits of branches it has not seen yet. Linkwright’s catch-up covers the last 100 commits of the default branch, recent pull requests and branches, and the commits of up to 20 unseen branches (20 more at each Refresh).

After the setup

• Use JQL on development data: see JQL for GitHub development data.
• In Linkwright, Jira settings › Apps › Git sync health shows every repository’s state and the time of its last successful check; a checklist on that page tracks the setup steps.