How to See or Track Previous Sprint History in Jira Easily 2026

From your project, open its board and look at the row of tabs across the top: Summary, Timeline, Backlog, Active sprints, List, Calendar, and Reports. Reports is where all historical sprint data lives, separate from Active sprints, which only shows what's currently in progress or not yet started. If your Active sprints view looks empty with a prompt to plan work in the backlog, that just means no sprint is currently running — it doesn't mean history isn't available, that's still sitting under Reports.

Inside Reports, choose Burndown Chart, then use the sprint dropdown at the top — labeled with the current or most recent sprint name — to switch to any earlier sprint your project has run. Next to it, a second dropdown lets you toggle how work is measured, typically Issue count or Story points, which changes what the vertical axis represents. Picking an older sprint here instantly reloads the chart with that sprint's specific data rather than requiring you to dig through a separate archive.

The burndown chart plots issue count (or story points) remaining against time across the sprint's date range. A gray guideline shows the ideal, steady pace needed to finish everything by the sprint's end date, while the colored line tracks what actually happened — work completed, added mid-sprint, or left over. Sudden jumps upward usually mean scope was added after the sprint started, while a flat line for several days points to a stretch where nothing was completed, both worth discussing in a retrospective rather than just noting in passing.

Scroll down past the chart itself to a table logging every event tied to the sprint by exact date and time — sprint start, sprint end, and each issue's movement in or out. Each row lists the issue keys involved, the event type, and columns for increase, decrease, and running remaining count, giving you a precise audit trail of what happened and when, down to the minute. This is the section to check when a sprint's outcome looks confusing from the chart alone — it answers exactly which ticket caused a jump or a stall.

Burndown Chart is one of several reports worth checking together — Sprint Report lists exactly which issues were completed versus not completed by the sprint's end, and Velocity Chart tracks completed work across multiple sprints so you can see whether your team's throughput is trending up, down, or holding steady. Looking at all three for the same sprint gives a fuller picture than any single chart alone, especially when explaining a missed sprint goal to stakeholders.

The real value of sprint history isn't the chart itself, it's what you do with the pattern it reveals — if velocity has been declining for three sprints, or the same type of ticket keeps getting pulled mid-sprint, that's a planning signal worth acting on before the next sprint starts. Pull up the last three to five sprints' reports together during backlog grooming or sprint planning rather than only looking back after something's gone wrong.