GitHub Pages: cancelled deployment, but Actions workflows remain queued

[begobe1978]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Deployment

Discussion Details

Hello GitHub Community,

I'm reporting a possible inconsistency between GitHub Pages deployments and GitHub Actions workflow states.

A similar issue was reported in [discussion #210387](https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/210387), but I've collected additional evidence through the REST API.

Environment

• GitHub Pages using branch-based publishing (main, root directory).
• Four previous deployments completed successfully.
• Issue started on October 15, 2026.

Steps and observations

1. Workflow Feature request: support jumping to lines in files #5 completed its build successfully, but the Pages deployment remained in updating_pages until it timed out.

2. The Actions API reports status: queued and conclusion: null for the workflow.

3. Both normal cancellation and force-cancellation return HTTP 409:

   Cannot cancel a workflow re-run that has not yet queued.

4. Querying the associated Pages deployment initially returned an empty status.

5. I cancelled the Pages deployment using the REST API. The operation succeeded, and its status changed to deployment_cancelled.

6. The Actions workflow nevertheless remains queued and cannot be cancelled.

7. A subsequent commit triggered workflow #6, which also appears in queued.

Questions

• Could an inconsistent Pages deployment state prevent subsequent workflows from starting?
• Is there a supported way to recover the deployment mechanism without changing the publishing source or deleting the repository?
• Can GitHub investigate this behavior, given that the Pages deployment was successfully cancelled but the Actions workflow remains queued?

I can provide the workflow run IDs and deployment IDs if needed.

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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