Bitbucket: decline a pull request, and can you reopen it?
Declining closes a Bitbucket pull request without merging it. Whether you can take that back depends on where the repository is: Bitbucket Cloud cannot reopen a declined pull request, while Bitbucket Data Center can. Data Center also declines pull requests by itself when nothing happens on them for a while. Below is how it works, from Atlassian's Decline a pull request (Cloud), Automatically decline inactive pull requests (Data Center 10.1) and the Data Center REST reference.
Bitbucket Cloud
- Who and how: the pull request's author or any reviewer can decline it, from More options > Decline.
- It cannot be undone. To have the same branch reviewed again, create a new pull request from it. A request to reopen declined pull requests, BCLOUD-23807 ("Ability to reopen a declined pull request", opened July 2025), was still Gathering Interest on October 26, 2026.
- What stays: the source and destination branches are not touched, and the comments and tasks are kept. You can still comment on the declined pull request, but new pushes to the branch no longer update it.
- Finding it again: Pull Requests in the sidebar, then Declined in the first Filter by dropdown.
- From the REST API:
POST …/2.0/repositories/{workspace}/{repo_slug}/pullrequests/{id}/decline. Atlassian's knowledge base points to it when the Decline button does nothing, for example for a pull request from a fork whose original repository was deleted.
Bitbucket Data Center
- Reopening: a declined pull request can be reopened. In the REST API,
POST …/pull-requests/{id}/declinedeclines andPOST …/pull-requests/{id}/reopenreopens, each with the pull request's currentversion; a stale version or a pull request in the wrong state is refused. - Auto-decline: on by default. A pull request with no activity, such as commits, comments or approvals, for 4 weeks is declined by the Bitbucket system user, with a comment saying it was declined for inactivity. The period can be 1, 2, 4, 8 or 12 weeks.
- Where to set it: Project settings > Auto-decline for all the project's repositories; Repository settings > Auto-decline with Use custom settings for one. An administrator can change the defaults for every repository with
pullrequest.auto.decline.settings.global.enabledandpullrequest.auto.decline.settings.global.inactivityWeeks.
Declining from IntelliJ IDEA
Pull Request Inbox for Bitbucket, a plugin by Lesstep for JetBrains IDEs 2024.1 or later, lists the Bitbucket Cloud and Bitbucket Data Center pull requests waiting for your review in an IDE tool window, and can decline one. It asks first, and from version 1.0.39 the question says what declining means where you are: on Bitbucket Cloud that it cannot be undone and that reviewing the branch again takes a new pull request, on Data Center that it can be reopened later. The review inbox and the merge checks are free; approving, commenting, merging and declining are Pro, with a 30-day trial.
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