GitHub Actions workflow run stuck in inconsistent state - unable to cancel

[Dengda98]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

ARC (Actions Runner Controller)

Discussion Details

Hello GitHub Actions team,

I encountered an issue where a GitHub Actions workflow run is stuck and cannot be canceled.

Repository: https://github.com/Dengda98/PyGRT

Workflow run: https://github.com/Dengda98/PyGRT/actions/runs/32218904471

Run ID: 32218904471

Status: Queued

Problem: Every attempt to cancel it fails with: "Failed to cancel workflow."

Could someone help investigate this stuck workflow run or reset its state?

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[nirav-gajera]

This is a known, recurring class of Actions bug — a run gets orphaned in the backend (stuck in queued, not attached to a live job), and both the UI cancel button and the REST cancel/force-cancel endpoints just fail against it (often a 500 under the hood), because the record itself is in a bad state rather than something a normal cancel can act on. Several recent threads describe the exact same thing: #202969, #196720, #203503, #204118.

One thing that's worked for people in that exact situation — try deleting the run directly via the GitHub CLI instead of cancelling it:

gh run delete 32218904471 -R Dengda98/PyGRT

That's confirmed to clear an orphaned queued run in at least one closely matching thread (#202969), even when both cancel and force-cancel had already failed the same way you're seeing.

If the delete also fails (403, or another error) — that confirms the record is genuinely corrupted server-side, and it needs GitHub staff to purge it directly rather than anything you can do client-side. At that point, GitHub Support is the right path, with the run URL/ID and a note that both UI cancel and gh run delete failed — that's the exact combination the similar threads above eventually needed staff intervention for.

Worth a quick check too: githubstatus.com for anything currently affecting Actions — a couple of the linked threads trace back to a recent Actions Runner Controller incident, so if there's an active or very recent incident, it's worth mentioning that alongside your report.

In the meantime, if this stuck run is blocking new workflow runs from starting (rather than just being annoying to look at), a fresh push should still trigger a new run independently — the stuck one shouldn't block unrelated new runs unless you have a concurrency block tying them together.

[Dengda98]

I tried the command you suggested:

gh run delete 32218904471 -R Dengda98/PyGRT

Unfortunately, it also failed with a 403 error:

HTTP 403: Could not delete the workflow run

Thank you for your help. I will wait for GitHub staff to investigate and help clean up this stuck workflow run.