Best approach for migrating custom Polaris themes to Coral in Zurich?

[Aparna45]

Hi everyone,

We recently upgraded to Zurich and are reviewing the impact on custom themes created in the Polaris experience.

In our current environment, we use several custom color themes, such as green, red, and pink, to support branding and maintain a consistent user experience. With the introduction of the Coral theme set in Zurich, we want to understand the best approach for recreating these themes while ensuring that:

• existing branding is preserved as closely as possible
• one custom theme (green) can be restored as the default theme for all users
• no theming or branding functionality is lost during the migration
• the user experience remains consistent after the upgrade

I’m looking for guidance from anyone who has already gone through this transition.

Questions:

1. What is the recommended approach for migrating or recreating custom Polaris themes in the new Coral theme set in Zurich?
2. Is there a supported way to convert or map existing Polaris theme configurations into Coral, or do these themes need to be rebuilt manually?
3. Are there any known limitations in Zurich related to custom branding, color variants, or default theme assignment compared with Polaris?
4. What is the best practice for setting a custom Coral theme as the default for all users?
5. Are there any upgrade considerations, risks, or common pitfalls to watch for when moving custom themes from Yokohama/Polaris to Zurich/Coral?

Any documentation, lessons learned, or implementation tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @Aparna45 

For customers upgrading to the Zurich theme, Polaris remains your Next Experience theme, unless you manually upgrade to Coral.

To activate the Coral theme in the ServiceNow Zurich release, enable it via user preferences or the Theme Builder.

Option1:User Preference: 

• Access User Preferences: Click on your avatar/initials in the top-right corner of the platform.
• Navigate to Themes: Select Preferences and then Theme.
• Select Coral: Choose the Coral option to apply the light theme

Option 2: Theme Builder    (Refer: Theme Builder release notes 

Publish the new Coral theme Publish or unpublish the new Coral theme directly from Theme Builder. This theme provides a fresh look and feel and features brand-neutral illustrations to enhance your user experience. A dark theme variant is available for web and mobile experiences.

Link: https://<Your_instance_name>/now/theme-builder/manager

Ensure Coral theme is published

refer: 

Configure Next Experience theming for mobile 

Zurich Release Update: Polaris vs Coral – Coral Explained 

[SohamTipnis]

Hi @Aparna45,

You can use glide.ui.polaris.experience  from sys_properties, by setting True, this will make the change in your theme, for instance. It takes a few moments for setting up the theme on the entire instance, and during this you will experience some lag and slowness in the instance. But after a few times this issue will be resolved.

I have attached the screenshot of the property for your reference.

Let me know if this helps!!! 😉

If you find my answer useful, please mark it as Helpful and Correct. ‌‌‌‌😊

Regards,
Soham Tipnis
ServiceNow Developer || Technical Consultant
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sohamtipnis10

[Aparna45]

My question is: I created custom themes in the Polaris theme, and we now want to migrate them to the Coral theme.