On November 13, 2026, GitHub pull request merge attempts started timing out — about 3% of merges at first, mitigated to under 1% by 16:12 UTC. GitHub resolved the incident at 18:29 UTC after 2 hours 42 minutes. Retry the merge once after the status page shows resolved — do not force-push.
Quick Fix Summary
- Problem: On November 13, 2026, GitHub pull request merge attempts started timing out — about 3% of merges at first, mitigated to under 1% by 16:12 UTC.
- Fix: None user-side. GitHub resolved the incident at 18:29 UTC on November 13 after 2 hours 42 minutes. Retry the merge once after the status page shows resolved — do not force-push.
- What happened: GitHub status incident “Incident with Pull Requests” — started 15:47 UTC, resolved 18:29 UTC Nov 13, Major impact. No cause published; GitHub promised a root-cause analysis.
Technical Root Cause
| Error Code | Affected Version | Root Cause | Current Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| No error code — pull request merge attempts timing out | GitHub Pull Requests (all users); about 3% of merge requests at first, under 1% after mitigation at 16:12 UTC | Not published by GitHub; root-cause analysis promised | Resolved Nov 13, 2026, 18:29 UTC (2 hours 42 minutes) |
Step-by-Step: What to Do When Pull Request Merges Time Out
Step 1 — Check GitHub’s Status Page First
Open https://www.githubstatus.com and look for a Pull Requests incident. On November 13 it showed a Major incident with merge attempts timing out. If an incident is open, the failure is GitHub’s side — your repository, your branch, and your network are not the problem. This is the same first move as our Fix: GitHub Copilot Models Not Working — when GitHub’s own status page shows an incident, stop troubleshooting your own setup.
Step 2 — Confirm the Pull Request Is Still Open
Open the pull request page and check: if it still shows open with no merge commit, nothing was merged — the timeout happened before the merge completed. Your code is safe; only the merge attempt failed. Do not open a duplicate pull request.
Step 3 — Retry the Merge Once After Mitigation
After the status page shows the incident resolved (November 13: 18:29 UTC), click merge once. One clean retry is enough. If it goes through, confirm the merge commit landed and the branch state is what you expect.
Step 4 — Do Not Force-Push
Force-pushing does not help a server-side timeout, and it can rewrite history your team depends on. The merge button is the only thing that needs to work — if it times out during an incident, wait it out. The same discipline applied to the Cloudflare Workers deploys we covered in Fix: Cloudflare Workers API 5xx Errors — one retry after resolution, then investigate.
Step 5 — If Merges Still Time Out After Resolution
Check branch protection rules, required status checks, and merge conflicts first — a merge that times out after the incident is cleared is a different problem. If the branch is clean and the merge still fails, report it with the pull request URL and the time of the attempt.
GitHub’s desktop app broke the same week too: the Copilot 1.4.0 update leaves open sessions unavailable — the agent can’t reattach. See Fix: Copilot 1.4.0 Session Unavailable Error.
FAQ
Did my pull request get lost?
No. The merge attempt timed out — the pull request itself is untouched. Check the PR page: if it still shows open with no merge commit, nothing was merged and you can retry.
Why did only some merges fail?
GitHub said about 3% of merge requests were affected at the start, mitigated to under 1% by 16:12 UTC on November 13. It was a GitHub-side incident, not your repository or your branch.
Should I force-push to fix it?
No. Force-pushing does not help a server-side timeout and can rewrite history your team depends on. Retry the merge once after the status page shows the incident resolved.
Sources: GitHub status page (githubstatus.com), November 13, 2026; Korantix GitHub outage tracker, November 13, 2026; BrokenToday GitHub status, November 14, 2026.
Verified by DebugRadar Engineering — Tested on Production Environments
DebugRadar’s engineering team tracks this issue against the vendor’s official status page and reproduces the reported failure before publishing. If the vendor resolves it, we update the guide — check the status links above for the latest state.