Originally posted Oct. 29, 2025

We are performing additional planned maintenance on Morningstar's source systems scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025, from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. CT. While conducting this work over the weekend helps reduce overall impact, we understand that some of our clients remain active on Saturdays. 

What to expect during the maintenance window:

• You will not experience system failures or loss of access.
• Some data may appear stale while the source systems are unavailable.

Potential downstream impact:

• Delays during the downtime may affect our ability to deliver the most recent data.
• Processing queues may slow, potentially extending the time required to rebuild files and refresh production files.

We will monitor the situation closely throughout the weekend and take all necessary steps to minimize disruption. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we complete this important work.

If you have any questions, please contact Morningstar Licensed Data Support.

Originally Posted Oct. 8, 2025

Morningstar will be conducting a disaster recovery test for our EUFTP account, euftp.morningstar.com, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, from 8:00 a.m. BST to 12:00 p.m. BST.

We have found that most failures during a failover test are the result of incomplete outbound firewall rules or connections being made directly to an IP address. If left unaddressed, both could result in a 4-hour outage during this test as the primary site will be down. We will be unable to reactivate it before 2:00 p.m.

To avoid this please

• Validate all connections are to the EUFTP.morningstar.com URL only, please never target an individual IP address.
• Validate all firewall rules or access lists are complete and detail both IP addresses shown below.

Our secondary FTP site is only accessible when live, testing in advance is not possible. Attempts to access the secondary site outside of this test window will result in a connection error, this is expected behavior.

Firewall rule details:

• SFTP: 216.228.234.161 & 195.47.237.161 Port: 22
• Active FTP: 216.228.234.161 & 195.47.237.161 Ports: 20,21
• Passive FTP: [ftp://FTP 216.228.234.161]FTP 216.228.234.161 & 195.47.237.161 Ports: 21, 24200-24249
• HTTPS: 216.228.234.161 & 195.47.237.161 Ports: 443. 
• FTPS: 216.228.234.161 & 195.47.237.161 Ports: 21,990

Please contact Morningstar Support with any questions or further needs.

Originally posted Jul. 10, 2025

As part of our ongoing effort to provide robust and relevant fund peer groups, we are introducing the following upcoming changes and refinements to the Morningstar Category system while continuing to implement the second phase of updates to our category grouping framework and methodologies. All these updates will launch on October 31, 2025.

The applicable category methodology papers are now available.

• US Retail Category:
  • US Funds
• 529 Plans Category:
  • 529 Plans
• International Category:
  • Australia
  • Europe, Asia, and Africa
  • India
  • Japan

What’s Changing?

• Retail Category Changes: Morningstar is making changes to the US and International Retail categories, including the introduction of new semiliquid fund categories, based on our observations of long-term market trends and how closely our categories reflect these changes.
• US Institutional Categories Retirement: Morningstar is retiring its Institutional Categories because they no longer serve their original purpose, and their distinctions can be reflected with other data points.
• Introducing Morningstar Category Groups: The new Morningstar Category Group will offer a more detailed linkage between categories compared to the existing Global Broad Category Groups. This update provides added granularity, empowering clients to perform more in-depth and insightful investment analyses using predefined groups curated by Morningstar’s experts.
• Updating the Global Broad Category Groups: The Global Broad Category Groups will be aligned with the new Category Groups to reflect our best insights into comprehensive groupings of fund types.

Category Grouping Change Release Timeline

The second phase of the implementation will occur on October 31, 2025, where we will:

• Rename the existing Global Broad Category Group field to “Morningstar Category Broad Group.”
• Update the names and identifiers within the Category Broad Group field.
• Consolidate Commodities and Property into a single Category Broad Group called “Real Assets.”
• Re-map each Category Group into the new Category Broad Group schema.

Preparing for the Changes

We encourage clients to review the detailed information below, which will help them further understand these changes and the specific actions they need to take to prepare for them.

• Retail Category Changes
  • US Retail Category Changes
  • International Category Changes
  • Morningstar Semiliquid Categories FAQs
• US Institutional Categories Retirement
  • Morningstar Institutional Category Changes FAQs
• Category Grouping Changes
  • Morningstar Managed Investments Data Feed Product Impact
  • Morningstar Fund API Center Product Impact
  • Morningstar Data Services Product Impact
  • Morningstar On Demand Product Impact
  • Category Group Update FAQs and Mappings

If you have further questions or require additional assistance, contact Morningstar Support.