# Source: https://gitlab.consulting/en-gb/blog/2025/11/20/gitlab-18-6-from-configuration-to-control.md


# GitLab 18.6 Release Highlights – From Configuration to Full Control
<h2 id="from-configuration-to-control-whats-new-in-gitlab-186">From Configuration to Control: What’s New in GitLab 18.6</h2>
<p>GitLab 18.6 offers a range of updates focused on enhancing control, operability, and continuous security across your software development lifecycle. Whether you&rsquo;re configuring complex CI/CD pipelines or managing enterprise-scale access, this release delivers new tools to streamline your DevSecOps journey.</p>
<h3 id="simplified-inheritance-controls">Simplified Inheritance Controls</h3>
<p>Nested groups just got easier to handle. With the new functionality that allows you to disable group inheritance, it&rsquo;s now possible to simplify permissions management. This is immensely useful when adhering to stricter security or compliance standards.</p>
<h3 id="cicd-pipeline-efficiency">CI/CD Pipeline Efficiency</h3>
<p>GitLab continues to tune its pipelines. Job dependencies can now be more explicitly defined using the new <code>needs:artifacts:true</code> syntax. This helps reduce the overhead and potential confusion between jobs, making large pipelines more efficient and easier to troubleshoot.</p>
<h3 id="enhanced-observability">Enhanced Observability</h3>
<p>Observability has been elevated in 18.6 with the added capability to integrate with OpenTelemetry. Export metrics and traces to a wider ecosystem of observability tools. This brings more control to software reliability engineering by seamlessly integrating with your existing infrastructure.</p>
<h3 id="improved-compliance-tracking">Improved Compliance Tracking</h3>
<p>Compliance capabilities now allow filtering audit events related to protected branches, tags, and merge request actions. Organisations in regulated industries will find this particularly helpful for aligning with internal and external auditing requirements.</p>
<h3 id="smarter-release-evidence">Smarter Release Evidence</h3>
<p>Generating release evidence is now more dynamic. GitLab 18.6 assigns human-readable names to artifact files and includes actionable metadata, which helps simplify release governance and post-release reviews.</p>
<h3 id="start-with-gitlab-solutions">Start with GitLab Solutions</h3>
<p>Whether you&rsquo;re in the UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, or working remotely from Israel, South Africa, or Paraguay — <a href="https://gitlab.consulting/en-gb/?mtm_campaign=internal-blog-link&amp;mtm_kwd=en-gb:gitlab-18-6-from-configuration-to-control">IDEA GitLab Solutions</a> offers expert consulting, licensing, and full-cycle implementation services. Let us help you modernise your DevSecOps strategy with GitLab’s powerful new capabilities.</p>