Kafka Error ELIGIBLE_LEADERS_NOT_AVAILABLE
Error code 83 · Retriable Broker
Eligible topic partition leaders are not available.
Common Causes
- All in-sync replicas for a partition are offline or under-replicated, and unclean leader election is disabled (unclean.leader.election.enable=false)
- Triggered during a preferred leader election when the preferred replica is not yet caught up and thus ineligible to become leader
- Broker hosting the preferred replica just started or is recovering and its log is not yet in sync with the partition's high watermark
Solutions
- Wait for the preferred replica broker to fully catch up — monitor under-replicated partitions until the count reaches zero before retrying the election
- Recover replica health first instead of forcing the election; bring the preferred or eligible replica back into ISR before retrying
- Run kafka-leader-election.sh with --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --election-type PREFERRED --all-topic-partitions after confirming the target replicas are in the ISR
Diagnostic Commands
# Check for under-replicated partitions
kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --describe --under-replicated-partitions
# Preview leader election results
kafka-leader-election.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --election-type PREFERRED --all-topic-partitions --dry-run 2>&1 | grep -i 'not eligible\|error'Related APIs
This error can be returned by: ElectLeaders
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