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JetBrains Report Highlights Jenkins as a Popular CI/CD Tool in 2026

Kris Stern
Kris Stern April 6, 2026 ⏱︎ 4 min read

A recent JetBrains blog post, "Best CI/CD Tools for 2026: What the Data Actually Shows", provides an overview of CI/CD tool adoption and trends. According to the report, Jenkins continues to play a major role in the ecosystem, with a 28% adoption rate, ranking just behind GitHub Actions. This highlights that Jenkins remains a widely used and trusted solution across organizations of all sizes.

The article highlights that while newer tools focus on ease of use, Jenkins’ enduring value lies in its unparalleled autonomy and extensibility. Here are the key strengths of Jenkins as identified in the report:

1. Flexibility and Control

The blog emphasizes that Jenkins is the premier choice for teams that need "full control over infrastructure and data." Unlike SaaS-based CI tools, Jenkins allows organizations to own their entire environment, which is a critical requirement for:

  • Strict Security & Compliance: Organizations with sensitive data that cannot leave private infrastructure.

  • Self-Hosting: Teams that prefer to manage their own compute resources to avoid the "black box" nature of cloud-native CI.

2. A Strong and Open Ecosystem

Even in 2026, Jenkins' ecosystem remains its greatest asset. The report highlights that:

  • Universal Integration: It can integrate with almost any tool in the software development lifecycle, from legacy version control systems to modern cloud providers.

  • Custom Workflows: Because of its open-source nature and thousands of plugins, it supports highly specialized or "bespoke" workflows that standard commercial tools might not accommodate.

3. Resilience in "Complex and Legacy" Environments

The article categorizes Jenkins as the "Best fit" for complex or legacy setups. While newer tools excel at "greenfield" projects (starting from scratch), Jenkins is praised for its ability to:

  • Manage "long-lived" setups that have evolved over years.

  • Support diverse, multi-platform environments (Windows, Linux, macOS).

  • Handle "heavy" pipelines that require professional DevOps expertise to orchestrate.

4. Open Source and Cost Transparency

As an open-source tool, Jenkins offers a significant financial advantage: no licensing fees. For large-scale enterprises with the engineering talent to maintain it, Jenkins provides a way to scale without the per-user or per-minute costs associated with commercial platforms like TeamCity or CircleCI.

5. Mature Pipeline-as-Code

The blog acknowledges Jenkins’ commitment to modern practices through the Jenkinsfile. This allows teams to define build, test, and deployment logic as code, ensuring that even this "venerable" tool remains compatible with GitOps and modern version-control-driven development.

A Balanced Perspective

The JetBrains report also notes that Jenkins typically requires more operational effort compared to fully managed CI/CD services. This is an important consideration: Jenkins provides flexibility and control, but it also assumes that teams are willing to invest in operating and maintaining their setup. For many organizations, this trade-off is intentional.

Summary

The report reinforces what many in the community already know: Jenkins continues to be a reliable and flexible CI/CD platform that adapts to a wide variety of use cases.

Its strength lies not in being the simplest tool, but in being one of the most adaptable and extensible. As the CI/CD landscape evolves, Jenkins remains a strong choice for teams that value:

  • Control over their infrastructure

  • Flexibility in their workflows

  • A mature and active open source ecosystem

And most importantly, it continues to be shaped by the contributions of its global community.

JetBrains has long supported open source communities, including Jenkins. Many Jenkins contributors benefit from free JetBrains IDE licenses, which help them build, maintain, and improve the project.

About the author

Kris Stern

Kris Stern

Kris has been helping out with Jenkins' GSoC participation organization since 2022 and has volunteered to be a GSoC project mentor. She has participated in GSoC twice as a contributor/student previously in 2019 and 2020, and has been trained academically as an astrophysicist with a PhD in the discipline of observational astronomy obtained from the University of Hong Kong in 2021. Professionally, Kris works in the IT sector as a software engineer. She has work experiences in Python, C++, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS/Sass, JQuery, SQL, and has completed projects in software development in general and specifically in artificial intelligence/deep learning/computer vision, Qt programming, and web development. Kris is passionate about open-source and would like to share this passion with fellow learners. Currently, Kris is a part-time MCIT Online student at UPenn.

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