# Source: https://gitlab.consulting/en-gb/blog/2026/01/15/gitlab-18-8-released.md


# GitLab 18.8: Compliance, Security and CI/CD Enhancements Released
<h2 id="whats-new-in-gitlab-188-enhanced-compliance-security-and-efficiency">What&rsquo;s New in GitLab 18.8: Enhanced Compliance, Security, and Efficiency</h2>
<p>GitLab 18.8 is now available, bringing a host of powerful new features designed to help teams move faster, stay secure, and ensure compliance at scale. As your trusted <a href="https://gitlab.consulting/en-gb/?mtm_campaign=internal-blog-link&amp;mtm_kwd=en-gb:gitlab-18-8-released">GitLab Select Partner</a> covering Central and Eastern Europe as well as globally through our international teams, we&rsquo;re excited to guide you through what&rsquo;s new and how your organisation can take advantage of the latest enhancements.</p>
<h3 id="accelerated-compliance-workflows">Accelerated Compliance Workflows</h3>
<p>Introducing the new <strong>Compliance Center</strong>, GitLab 18.8 makes it easier than ever to manage and monitor compliance risks across your projects. With this centralised interface, compliance teams gain visibility into audit events and security violations, and can act more quickly with customisable policies and improved reporting tools.</p>
<h3 id="enhanced-security-controls">Enhanced Security Controls</h3>
<p>Shift left further with GitLab 18.8’s improved <strong>Software Supply Chain Security</strong>. This release enhances dependency scanning and SLSA provenance standards, reducing vulnerabilities and ensuring trusted pipelines from code to cloud. There’s also improved vulnerability insights to help your security teams respond to threats more effectively.</p>
<h3 id="boost-cicd-performance">Boost CI/CD Performance</h3>
<p>GitLab 18.8 ramps up <strong>Pipeline Efficiency</strong> with updates like failed job retries with different runners and reduced pipeline noise. These advancements can save valuable developer time and improve overall product delivery speed.</p>
<h3 id="enhanced-ux-and-observability">Enhanced UX and Observability</h3>
<p>Expect continuous improvements in UI responsiveness and visual cues across the application. GitLab 18.8 also introduces new observability features, including HAProxy exporter metrics that give deeper insights into instance performance, helping operations teams detect and prevent outages swiftly.</p>
<h3 id="namespace-migration-assistant">Namespace Migration Assistant</h3>
<p>A new framework simplifies the migration of projects to a group-level namespace, aiding in long-term maintainability and aligning with enterprise standards. If you&rsquo;re migrating projects during structure wide changes, this feature is especially useful.</p>
<h3 id="how-we-can-help">How We Can Help</h3>
<p>As an authorised <strong>GitLab partner</strong>, <a href="https://gitlab.consulting/en-gb/?mtm_campaign=internal-blog-link&amp;mtm_kwd=en-gb:gitlab-18-8-released">IDEA GitLab Solutions</a> offers hands-on consulting, support, and licensing tailored for teams in the UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia and beyond. Let our certified experts help you implement and optimise GitLab 18.8’s full potential.</p>
<p>Contact us today to upgrade your DevSecOps with the latest from GitLab.</p>