Incident: Admin UI Displays Outdated Document Version Intermittently After Publish

Describe the Bug

Description
In our Payload CMS project (Supabase/Postgres backend, deployed on Vercel), the Admin panel intermittently shows an old version of a document even after a newer version has been published. The API and frontend always reflect the correct, latest version, but the Admin UI occasionally loads and allows editing of a stale state. This has led to editors unknowingly overwriting updated content with older data.

A sample page with the issue - showing Changed - Revert to published.
Check the Last Modified timestamp - October 5th 2025, 2:27 AM

Now, check the version history of this page below.
The version corresponding to the Last Modified timestamp is version 7002 (draft), with newer versions published after 7002.

Frequency and Scope

• This issue has been observed on approximately 8 out of 250 pages.
• It occurs inconsistently and cannot be reliably reproduced.
• It affects both production and development environments.

Impact

• Admin users sometimes see and edit an older version when opening a page.
• If they press save or publish, Payload overwrites the correct version with stale data.
• Resulting data loss requires manual recovery from version history or backups.

Related Issues and References

• Similar to Issue #9012 – “Old data in payload UI”.
• Also related to Issue #12914 – “Back button loads outdated document after save”, where stale data appears due to navigation/state inconsistencies.

Attempts and Status

• We opened a query in the Payload Discord for guidance: https://discord.com/channels/967097582721572934/1425104354133807249
• No suggestion or fix has been received so far from the Payload community.
• The issue persists across environments and Payload versions.

Request
This appears to be a state synchronisation or version cache issue within the Admin panel.
We request investigation into whether the Admin UI might be serving stale data after publishing due to cached version states, route transitions, or browser navigation behaviours. Any insights or pending fixes in the road-map addressing intermittent outdated states in Admin view would be greatly appreciated.

Important Query
How does Payload fetch the version whose content is shown on the admin UI? Can we get the data-points used w.r.t. the _pages_v table, given that we have a 'pages' collection.
Do the updated_at, version_updated_at, and latest fields get used here?

Link to the code that reproduces this issue

npx create-payload-app@latest -t blank

Reproduction Steps

Reproduction Steps

• Edit and publish changes to a document in the Payload Admin panel.
• Confirm that the changes are saved and the API/frontend reflect the new content.
• Return to the Admin panel, either through direct navigation or by using the browser’s back button.
• Observe that the Admin panel displays an older, previously saved version instead of the most recent published document.

Which area(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

Not sure

Environment Info

Binaries:
  Node: 20.19.2
  npm: 10.8.2
  Yarn: N/A
  pnpm: 10.15.1
Relevant Packages:
  payload: 3.59.1
  next: 15.3.3
  @payloadcms/db-postgres: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/db-vercel-postgres: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/drizzle: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/email-nodemailer: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/graphql: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/live-preview: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/live-preview-react: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/next/utilities: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/payload-cloud: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/plugin-cloud-storage: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/plugin-form-builder: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/plugin-nested-docs: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/plugin-redirects: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/plugin-search: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/plugin-seo: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/richtext-lexical: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/storage-s3: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/translations: 3.59.1
  @payloadcms/ui/shared: 3.59.1
  react: 19.1.0
  react-dom: 19.1.0
Operating System:
  Platform: linux
  Arch: x64
  Version: #33~24.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Sep 19 17:02:30 UTC 2
  Available memory (MB): 14806
  Available CPU cores: 12