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Internationalization settings in Kibana

You do not need to configure any settings to run Kibana in English.

General settings

i18n.defaultLocale

Supported on:

The locale used for server-rendered strings and as the default for users who haven't picked a preferred language. Must be one of the values listed in i18n.locales when that setting is non-empty.

Datatype: string

Default: 'en'

i18n.locales

Supported on:

The list of locales that Kibana offers in the per-user language picker. Locales not in this list are not available to users, even if translation files for them are installed. Set to [] to disable the language picker entirely.

Datatype: list

Default: ["en", "fr-FR", "ja-JP", "zh-CN", "de-DE"]

i18n.locale

Supported on:

Set the Kibana interface language.

Datatype: enum

Default: en

Options:

  • en - English
  • zh-CN - Chinese
  • ja-JP - Japanese
  • fr-FR - French
  • de-DE - German
Deprecation details

Replaced by i18n.defaultLocale. Kibana continues to honor i18n.locale if set, logging a deprecation warning at startup.

Kibana ships translation files for English, French, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and German. Plugins and admin-installed translation files can add additional locales. Any locale listed in i18n.locales for which a translation file exists will be served; locales without translation files fall back to English.

When i18n.locales is not empty, individual users can choose their preferred display language:

  • User Profile page — Users can select a language from the Language section on their profile page (User icon → Profile).
  • User menu — Users can select a language from the Language option in the user menu available from the application header.

When a user sets a preferred language, it is stored in their user profile and takes effect after a page reload.

Kibana resolves the display language using the following priority chain:

  1. User profile setting — The language selected by the user in their profile or the user menu (must be one of i18n.locales).
  2. i18n.defaultLocale config — The server-wide default set in kibana.yml.
# 1. Default behavior — picker shows the five bundled locales, server defaults
#    to English. Equivalent to omitting all i18n.* keys.

# 2. Curate the picker to a subset:
i18n.locales: ["en", "ja-JP"]
i18n.defaultLocale: "en"

# 3. Disable the per-user picker entirely (server still serves defaultLocale).
#    The flow-style empty array (square brackets) is the supported way to
#    express "no locales"; the block-list form has no syntax for an empty list.
i18n.locales: []
i18n.defaultLocale: "en"

# 4. Legacy form — still works, logs a deprecation warning at startup:
i18n.locale: "ja-JP"