Let’s talk about GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions has undergone significant growth and transformation since its launch in 2018, particularly highlighted by the 11.5 billion minutes used in 2025, marking a 35% increase from the previous year. To address scaling challenges, GitHub undertook a substantial re-architecture of its backend services, enabling it to handle 71 million jobs daily and significantly boost job-starting capabilities for enterprises. The platform's architectural overhaul has paved the way for delivering community-requested features, such as YAML anchors, non-public workflow templates, deeper reusable workflows, larger cache limits, and increased workflow dispatch inputs. These enhancements are aimed at improving efficiency, modularity, and consistency in CI/CD pipelines. Looking ahead to 2026, GitHub plans to introduce additional features like timezone support in scheduled jobs, parallel steps, and other user-experience improvements, all while actively seeking community feedback to shape its roadmap and ensure the platform meets developers' evolving needs.