Changes to URLs for the new Ensembl site

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As part of our transition to the new Ensembl, we have updated the URLs for genomes on our new site. The URLs for integrated genomes now contain genome assembly accession numbers e.g. GCA_000001405.29. Some genomes on our new site contained a genome tag e.g. grch38 (examples in the post below). Saved links to these tags will now fail.

Users actively using the new site should note that any selected genome will need to be reselected after the transition of the beta.ensembl.org URL to ensembl.org. We expect this change in mid-August 2026.

New URL structure:

The updated URLs now look as follows:

https://beta.ensembl.org/genome/GCA_000001405.29

These also replace the Ensembl UUIDs currently used for genomes when they are integrated.

For example, the URL for the partial release of Bellinger river turtle – 2026-07-13 :
https://beta.ensembl.org/genome/c94f94e8-fb05-4900-99d1-62a2b9b81b84

will become the GCA based URL (https://beta.ensembl.org/genome/GCA_040894355.2) when this genome is successfully integrated. Any saved URLs containing an Ensembl UUID will still resolve to the same genome and geneset release.

In the case of multiple genesets for the same genome assembly accession, the data processing teams will decide which set is assigned the GCA based URL, and which retains the Ensembl UUID URL even when integrated.

Genome tag based URLs are retired

This is not the case for URLs with a genome tag e.g. https://beta.ensembl.org/genome/grch38. Saved URLs of this type will fail to resolve. The list of updated URLs for genome tags is below.

Genome tags and corresponding updated URL: