GitHub Actions / Pages queued runs cannot be cancelled — force-cancel returns HTTP 500

[CandyCheng-git]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Deployment

Discussion Details

Hi GitHub Community,

I have multiple GitHub Actions / GitHub Pages workflow runs stuck in Queued state and they cannot be cancelled.

Repository:
https://github.com/CandyCheng-git/Candycheng-git.github.io

Related repo issue:
CandyCheng-git/Candycheng-git.github.io#4

Affected runs:

• Deploy to GitHub Pages Proposal feature : Multi-repository discussions #41
  Run ID: 26326705747
  URL: https://github.com/CandyCheng-git/Candycheng-git.github.io/actions/runs/26326705747

• Deploy to GitHub Pages Will Discussions will be available for private repositories ? #40
  Run ID: 26326609020
  URL: https://github.com/CandyCheng-git/Candycheng-git.github.io/actions/runs/26326609020

• pages build and deployment Why no Lollipop ? #76
  Run ID: 26326360756
  URL: https://github.com/CandyCheng-git/Candycheng-git.github.io/actions/runs/26326360756

What I tried:

• UI cancel failed with “Failed to cancel workflow”.
• GitHub CLI authentication is valid.
• Token scopes include repo and workflow.
• REST API force-cancel was attempted for all three runs using:

gh api -X POST repos/CandyCheng-git/Candycheng-git.github.io/actions/runs/RUN_ID/force-cancel

All three returned HTTP 500:

{
"message": "Failed to cancel workflow run",
"documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/actions/workflow-runs#force-cancel-a-workflow-run",
"status": "500"
}

This looks like a GitHub backend-side Actions / Pages queue issue rather than a workflow YAML, local CLI, or authentication problem.

This affects GitHub Pages deployment and Actions workflow runs. Both UI cancel and REST API force-cancel return failure / HTTP 500.

I have temporarily disabled the workflow to avoid creating more queued runs.

Has anyone seen this before, and is there any workaround other than escalating to GitHub Support?

[github-actions[bot]]

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