JQL Sprint Queries: Current, Previous, Next and Dates

A team lead builds a dashboard filter for the current sprint: sprint = "Sprint 1". It works for two weeks. Then the next team names its sprints Sprint 14, 15 and 16, and the same filter returns 30 work items from four sprints. Nobody touched it.

Sprint JQL looks small: one field and three functions. We ran every sprint question we could find on a live Jira Cloud site on 14 November 2026 and wrote down the count each query returned and the trap behind it. Below are 15 recipes, the works and fails table, and what Jira cannot search at all.

How Jira reads the Sprint field

The Sprint field holds the sprints a work item is or was in. Atlassian’s JQL fields reference says the search “is based on either the sprint name or the sprint ID (i.e. the number that Jira automatically allocates to a sprint).” It also says “This works for active sprints and future sprints.” In our test closed sprints worked too: sprint = 35 found the work of a completed sprint.

Three functions do the rest. From the JQL functions reference:

• openSprints(): “Search for work items that are assigned to a sprint that was started, but has not yet been completed.”
• closedSprints(): “Search for work items that are assigned to a completed Sprint.”
• futureSprints(): “Search for work items that are assigned to a sprint that hasn’t been started yet.”

All three take only in and not in. A work item can be in several sprints at once: a story carried over keeps its closed sprint and gains the new one.

Our test site. Two scrum boards. SPR: three closed sprints (IDs 35, 36, 39), the active SPR Sprint 6 (ID 40, 11 to 24 November) and a future one (ID 41); 34 work items, 10 of them in no sprint. PAY: Sprint 14 (ID 2), still active although it ended on 25 October, and two future sprints, Sprint 15 (ID 3) and Sprint 16 (ID 1). Every count below comes from Jira’s search on that site.

Current sprint

1. What is in the current sprint?

project = SPR AND sprint in openSprints()

On our site: 9 work items. Without project = SPR the same function found 23: the 9 plus 14 from PAY’s sprint.

Trap: “open” means started and not completed, not “today is inside the sprint”. PAY’s Sprint 14 ended 20 days before our test and its 14 work items still counted as the current sprint. openSprints() also covers every running sprint on the site, so always add the project or the board’s own filter.

2. What is in the current sprint of one team?

sprint in openSprints("PAY")

On our site: 14 work items, PAY only. openSprints("SPR", "PAY") gave 23, and futureSprints("PAY") gave PAY’s 7 planned work items. The reference shows the functions with empty brackets; this argument is not documented.

Trap: the argument is a project key and nothing else. A board ID or a sprint name fails with Could not resolve the project '41' provided to function 'openSprints'. And it selects the project’s sprints, not its work items: closedSprints("SPR") returned 13, the 12 SPR work items plus WEB-10 from another project that sat in an SPR sprint. Since it is undocumented, keep project = PAY AND sprint in openSprints() in filters that must last.

3. What is in one sprint by its name?

sprint = "SPR Sprint 6"

On our site: 9 work items, the same as sprint = 40. Case did not matter: "spr sprint 6" found the same 9.

Trap: when no sprint has the exact name, = matches every sprint that contains the text, on every board. sprint = "Sprint 1" found 30 work items in SPR Sprint 1, Sprint 14, Sprint 15 and Sprint 16. sprint = "SPR" found 46, every sprint on the site, because “Sprint” contains “spr”. An exact name wins: sprint = "Sprint 14" found only that sprint’s 14. Names change and repeat; IDs do not.

4. How do I find a sprint’s ID?

sprint = 40

On our site: 9 work items, SPR Sprint 6. cf[10020] = 40 returned the same 9 (10020 is the Sprint field’s ID on our site; yours may differ).

Two places show the ID. Start typing sprint = in the JQL editor: the reference says “The sprint ID will also be shown, in brackets”. And the board’s sprint list in the REST API, /rest/agile/1.0/board/{boardId}/sprint, lists every sprint with its ID, state and dates.

Trap: a deleted sprint’s ID breaks the filter. sprint = 37 gave Sprint with id 37 does not exist or you do not have permission to view it. A saved filter on that sprint stops working with the same error.

Previous and next sprint

5. What was in the previous sprint?

project = SPR AND sprint = 39

On our site: 5 work items, SPR Sprint 5, the sprint completed last. There is no function for it: sprint in previousSprint() and sprint in lastClosedSprint() both gave Unable to find JQL function 'previousSprint()'. (with each name). The request for one, JRACLOUD-79678, has 84 votes.

Trap: do not take the highest closed ID. IDs follow creation, not the calendar. On PAY, Sprint 16 has ID 1 and Sprint 15 has ID 3. And sprint in closedSprints() is not “the last sprint”: it returned all 12 SPR work items from three closed sprints. You change the ID after every sprint, by hand or with an Automation rule.

6. What is planned for the next sprint?

project = SPR AND sprint = 41

On our site: 7 work items, SPR’s only future sprint. sprint in futureSprints() returned the same 7 because SPR plans one sprint ahead. nextSprint() does not exist.

Trap: with two or more planned sprints, futureSprints() mixes them. On PAY it returned the work of Sprint 15 and Sprint 16 together. Use the ID, or sprint in (40, 41) for this sprint and the next: 16 work items.

7. What was carried over into this sprint?

project = SPR AND sprint in closedSprints() AND sprint in openSprints()

On our site: 4 work items (SPR-4, SPR-8, SPR-9, SPR-11). The opposite, work new in this sprint, is sprint in openSprints() AND sprint not in closedSprints(): 5.

Trap: this finds work that was in any closed sprint, not only the previous one. SPR-9 had been in three sprints. For “carried over from sprint 39 only”, write sprint = 39 AND sprint in openSprints(): 2 work items, SPR-9 and SPR-11.

8. What was left behind when the sprint closed?

project = SPR AND sprint in closedSprints()
  AND sprint not in (openSprints(), futureSprints())
  AND statusCategory != Done

On our site: 1 work item, SPR-1: it left a closed sprint for the backlog and was not finished. Without the last line it found 8, mostly finished work.

Trap: these work items are not “in no sprint”. Their Sprint field still holds the closed sprint, so sprint is EMPTY misses them. Our Jira sprints guide shows the backlog query that catches both.

In, not in, done

9. What is not in this sprint?

project = SPR AND (sprint != 40 OR sprint is EMPTY)

On our site: 25 work items. Without the OR sprint is EMPTY part: 15.

Trap: != and not in skip empty fields, so the 10 work items in no sprint vanish. The same happened with names: sprint not in ("Sprint 1") AND project = SPR returned 16. It dropped the empty ones and, by the substring rule of recipe 3, everything in SPR Sprint 1.

10. What got done in this sprint?

project = SPR AND sprint = 40 AND statusCategory = Done

On our site: 5 work items. With resolved >= "2026-11-11 08:10" (the sprint’s start) in place of the status category: 4.

Trap: SPR-9 is in a green Released status with no resolution, so every query on resolved or resolution misses it. Our status categories post shows why. The sprint report has a third rule: only the board’s last column counts.

11. Which sprints have a name containing a word?

sprint = "subtask"

On our site: 7 work items, all in “SPR Sprint 7 (subtask test)”. This is recipe 3’s trap used on purpose.

Trap: ~ is refused: The operator '~' is not supported by the 'sprint' field. Wildcards too: sprint = "Sprint 1*" found no sprint. A short word matches more than you think, as "SPR" showed. A 2022 answer in the Atlassian Community says sprint names “aren’t available for fine-grained searching”; on Jira Cloud today a part of the name works, with these limits.

12. How do I sort by sprint?

project = PAY AND sprint is not EMPTY ORDER BY sprint ASC

On our site: Sprint 14, then 15, then 16: the board’s order, although the IDs run 2, 3, 1.

Trap: you cannot compare sprints. sprint > 39 gives The operator '>' is not supported by the 'sprint' field. So “all sprints after this one” has no query; only ORDER BY knows the order.

Dates and history

13. What was added to the sprint after it started?

sprint CHANGED AFTER -7d

On our site: an error, History searches do not support the 'sprint' field. sprint WAS 40 gave the same. The JQL fields reference lists WAS and CHANGED as unsupported for Sprint.

Trap: there is no JQL for scope change. JRACLOUD-75868, “JQL search for issues added and removed from a sprint”, has 1,493 votes and has been Gathering Interest since 2018. The sprint report marks added work with an asterisk, one sprint at a time.

14. Which work is in sprints that end this month?

"Sprint end date" >= startOfMonth() AND "Sprint end date" <= endOfMonth()

On our site: Field 'Sprint end date' does not exist or you do not have permission to view it. Jira has no sprint date fields. JRACLOUD-72007, “Allow sprint start and end dates to be searched by JQL and displayed as columns in filters”, has 1,320 votes, open since 2019.

Workaround without an app: copy the dates into the query, and keep the sprint in it. For work resolved during sprint 40, project = SPR AND sprint = 40 AND resolved >= "2026-11-11 08:10" AND resolved < "2026-11-24 08:10" found 4. Without sprint = 40 it found 17: everything resolved in those days, in other sprints or in none. Change the dates every sprint. The date rules are in our JQL dates guide.

15. Which work is late for its sprint?

"Sprint end date" < now() AND statusCategory != Done

On our site: the same missing-field error. PAY’s Sprint 14 shows why you want it: it ended on 25 October, was never completed, and its 12 unfinished work items still look current to openSprints(). Nothing in plain JQL can tell an overdue sprint from a running one.

What sprint JQL cannot do, by votes

Atlassian’s public tracker shows how long people have asked for the missing pieces. Votes as of 14 November 2026:

The Data Center request for the last closed sprint puts it plainly: such queries “are completely analogous to the specific JQL function latestReleasedVersion()”. Versions have had latestReleasedVersion() for years (see Jira fix version); sprints still have no equivalent.

Works and fails: every sprint query we ran

Run on our Jira Cloud site on 14 November 2026 through Jira’s own search and its JQL check.

More JQL beyond sprints, all tested the same way, is in our JQL cheat sheet.

Sprint dates as real fields

We build JQL Blocks, a Jira app that is in Marketplace review as we write. It adds what recipes 13 to 15 lack, as read-only Jira fields: Sprint start date, Sprint end date, Sprint complete date, Sprint count, Sprint state and Added after sprint start, plus two JQL functions. On a second test site with the app installed, on 14 November 2026:

The zero is a trap of its own: the fields hold a date and a time, like created, so search a day as a range. Added after sprint start is filled from the install on; earlier sprints stay empty. The app’s During a sprint block covers the “previous sprint” case: it finds work created, resolved or moved during a board’s current, previous or last few sprints, and writes those sprints’ days into plain JQL. The app has no AI in it. To write any JQL from a form first, try our free JQL builder; nothing you type leaves the browser.

How we tested

Two Jira Cloud sites of ours, 14 November 2026, about 07:00 Central European time. Each query went to Jira’s JQL check (/rest/api/3/jql/parse, strict validation) for the error text and to Jira’s search (/rest/api/3/search/jql) for the work items, from a signed-in browser on the same site. Sprint IDs, states and dates came from the board API. We only read: no sprint, filter or work item was changed for this page. Votes were read from jira.atlassian.com the same day. The Atlassian quotes are from the JQL fields and functions references, fetched that morning.