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September 2026 newsletter

ClickHouse released version 26.8, adding custom HTTP handlers, a new `|>` pipelined SQL operator, a `system.user_query_log` table, a URL database engine, and Japanese and Chinese tokenizer support for the text index. The release also includes previews of PromQL, On-Demand Compute, AI functions, and sub-second Postgres replication to ClickHouse, while PostHog ClickHouse engineer Rory Shanks contributed replica mutation-fetch, text-index token caching, and JSON subcolumn read improvements to 26.8. The company's Open House Roadshow continues with stops in Bangalore on Sep 22, London on Sep 30, and Munich on Oct 6.

by read8 min views1 publishedSep 17, 2026
September 2026 newsletter
Image: Clickhouse (auto-discovered)

Hello and welcome to another ClickHouse newsletter!

We’ve got another feature-packed ClickHouse release, with custom HTTP handlers, pipelined SQL, and Japanese/Chinese tokenizers for the text-index.

Elsewhere, Mohamed Hussain S dives into the replication queue, Tom Schreiber and Lionel Palacin share the first end-to-end results from CostBench, and Himanshu Pandey walks us through reading ClickHouse query plans.

We also have preview releases of PromQL, On-Demand Compute, AI functions, and sub-second Postgres replication to ClickHouse

This month's featured community member is Rory Shanks, ClickHouse Engineer at PostHog.

Rory’s background is in site reliability and cloud platform engineering, and he previously worked as a Staff DevOps Engineer at ENWAY and a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Inkitt and powercloud.

Rory contributed several improvements to ClickHouse 26.8, released at the end of August.

First, he added an option for replicas to fetch already mutated data parts from another replica, avoiding the need to repeat mutation work locally. Additionally, he added caching for tokens absent from the text index and improved JSON subcolumn reads by reusing column metadata during conversions.

➡️ Connect with Rory on LinkedIn

Open House Roadshow #

We’re halfway through the Open House Roadshow, but there are still visits to come in Bangalore (Sep 22), London (Sep 30), and Munich (Oct 6), so don’t forget to sign up!

➡️ See all Open House locations

26.8 release #

After last month’s mega 26.7 release blog post, we’ve decided to try something different this month: multiple smaller posts!

The 26.8 release includes a series of features, such as custom HTTP handlers and dynamic query filtering, that enable you to use ClickHouse as a streaming HTTP API. This release also adds a new |> operator that lets us write queries as a sequence of transformations.

The release also adds a system.user_query_log table that shows only the current user’s queries, a URL database engine, and Japanese and Chinese tokenizer support for the text index.

Understanding the replication queue in ClickHouse #

Mohamed Hussain S explores ClickHouse’s replication queue by stopping a replica and investigating the backlog.

He shows how to use the system.replicas and system.replication_queue system tables to diagnose issues, and explains why a non-empty queue doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong.

Measuring real-time performance per dollar under continuous load: CostBench’s first end-to-end results #

Tom Schreiber and Lionel Palacin share the first end-to-end results from CostBench, an open benchmark for cloud data warehouse cost-performance: performance-per-dollar, rather than just speed.

They test ClickHouse Cloud, Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift Serverless under continuous ingestion, measuring the cost of keeping fresh data ready for queries alongside query performance.

In a follow-up post, they take a closer look at the ClickHouse Cloud and Snowflake results, explaining how their architectures and billing models contribute to the performance-per-dollar gap.

Announcing On-Demand Compute: Instant compute for your most intensive workloads #

This is one of the biggest features we have been working on: On-Demand Compute is now in private preview.

You are now a step away from off intensive workloads to dedicated ClickHouse workers. And it doesn’t land alone! It comes with two friends:

• A new cost-based optimizer (CBO) • A new distributed query execution framework

The dream for anybody wanting to offload ad-hoc or data lake queries to dedicated workers!

Curious to learn more? Melvyn Peignon will present a live webinar on September 24th, where he’ll explain how it works, give a live demo, and talk through the six-month roadmap.

ClickHouse 26.8 LTS: 57 Breaking Changes Since 26.3 #

Mohamed Hussain S has written an alternative blog post for the 26.8 release, exploring changes since the previous LTS release, 26.3.

He highlights breaking changes and new defaults across all five releases, with a checklist of what to audit before upgrading and monitor afterward.

Postgres Round-up #

We’ve been publishing more and more Postgres content as the weeks go by, so I thought it deserved its own section in the newsletter.

Introducing ClickHouse's new TimeSeries Engine: Your drop-In Prometheus replacement #

James Cunningham introduces PromQL and the TimeSeries table engine in ClickHouse Cloud, now in private preview.

You can send metrics to ClickHouse through Prometheus remote write and query them with PromQL in Grafana, ClickHouse, or ClickStack, all while keeping your existing collection setup.

Quick reads #

Upcoming events #

Global virtual events

Virtual training

Events in AMER

- [Rows and Columns summit San Francisco](https://luma.com/clickh-wavw) - Sep 22nd
- [Google Cloud Summit Brasil](https://cloudonair.withgoogle.com/events/google-cloud-summit-brasil-2026-1) - Sep 23-24, 2026
- [Runway by RunReveal](https://runway.runreveal.com/) - San Francisco - Sep 29, 2026
- [CoreWeave Fully Connected](https://coreweave.com/fully-connected-2026) - San Francisco - Sep 29 - Oct 2, 2026
  • Sao Paulo In-person training - Observabilidade com ClickStack - Sao Paulo - Oct 8, 2026
  • Sao Paulo Meetup - Observabilidade de Agentes em Escala: o Case do iFood com Langfuse - Sao Paulo - Oct 8, 2026

Events in EMEA

- [AI Builders and Databases Barcelona](https://luma.com/p7td11mb) - Sep 23, 2026
- [BigDataLondon - Sept 23-24, 2026](https://www.bigdataldn.com/)

- [FabCON - Sept 28 - Oct 1](https://espc.tech/conference/fabcon-europe-2026/)
- [FabCon Lunch and Learn - Sept 30, 2026](https://go2.striim.com/2026-fabcon-ai-roundtable?tracker=clickhouse)

- [Open House Roadshow Munich](https://clickhouse.com/company/events/202610-munich-open-house?utm_source=clickhouse&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=202609-newsletter&ref=newsletter) - Oct 6, 2026
- [World Summit AI Amsterdam](https://worldsummit.ai/) - Oct 7-8, 2026

- [SRECon Dublin Happy Hour by the Quay](https://luma.com/clickh-6n6u) - Oct 13, 2026
- [SRECon Dublin](https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon25emea) - Oct 13-15, 2026
- [Data Innovation Summit Dubai](https://datainnovationsummit.com/region/mea/) Oct 14-15

- [PostgreSQL Conference Europe - Oct 20-23, 2026](https://www.postgresql.org/about/event/pgconfeu-2026-2587/)
- [AWS Cloud Days Riyadh](https://aws.amazon.com/events/cloud-days/riyadh/) - Oct 21, 2026

- [AI Builders and Databases Dubai](https://luma.com/clickh-vtzf) - Oct 22, 2026
- [Battle of the Quants London - Oct 22, 2026](https://battleofthequants.com/london-2026/)

Events in APAC

- Singapore: [Confluent Financial Services Leaders Summit](https://events.confluent.io/confluent-fsi-singapore-2026) - Oct 9, 2026
- Sydney: [Build a unified data stack for real-time AI with Postgres and ClickHouse](https://clickhouse-workshop-syd.innovatusmediaevents.com/) - Oct 13, 2026
source & further reading
clickhouse.com — original article AI Functions in ClickHouse: Upgrade your SQL to the AI age ClickHouse is a launch partner for the Data agent in ChatGPT Work How MCP Toolbox turns agent text into ClickHouse vectors
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