Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

View stack events by operation

You can view stack events grouped by operation to better understand the sequence and scope of changes made to your stack. Operation-based grouping helps you track related events together, making it easier to monitor progress and troubleshoot issues when they occur.

Each stack operation (create, update, delete, rollback) is assigned a unique operation ID that groups all related events. This allows you to focus on specific operations and quickly identify the root cause of failures.

Prerequisites

To use DescribeEvents API, you must have the necessary IAM permissions to: DescribeEvents.

View stack events by operation (console)

CloudFormation automatically refreshes the stack events every minute. The New events available badge appears when new stack events occur. Choose the refresh icon to load these events into the list.

By viewing stack events grouped by operation, you can understand the sequence of events for each operation and quickly identify which specific operation caused issues (if you are debugging your stack).

While your stack operation is running, it's listed with a status of CREATE_IN_PROGRESS, UPDATE_IN_PROGRESS, or DELETE_IN_PROGRESS. After your operation has completed successfully, its status changes to CREATE_COMPLETE, UPDATE_COMPLETE, or DELETE_COMPLETE.

For more information, see Understand CloudFormation stack creation events and Monitor the progress of a stack update.

View stack events by operation (Amazon CLI)

You can use the describe-events command with operation ID filtering to view events for specific operations.

Get last operation IDs

The stack description available via describe-stacks API now includes LastOperations information showing recent operation IDs and their types. This enables you to quickly identify which operations occurred and their current status without parsing through event logs.

aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name MyStack

The following is an example response showing the last operation was a Rollback following a failed Update operation.

{  
    "Stacks": [  
        {  
            "StackId": "arn:aws-cn:cloudformation:us-east-1:123456789012:stack/MyStack/07580010-bb79-11f0-8f6c-0289bb5c804f",  
            "StackName": "MyStack",  
            "Description": "A simple CloudFormation template to create an S3 bucket.",  
            "CreationTime": "2025-11-07T01:28:13.778000+00:00",  
            "LastUpdatedTime": "2025-11-07T01:43:39.838000+00:00",  
            "RollbackConfiguration": {},  
            "StackStatus": "UPDATE_ROLLBACK_COMPLETE",  
            "DisableRollback": false,  
            "NotificationARNs": [],  
            "Tags": [],  
            "EnableTerminationProtection": false,  
            "DriftInformation": {  
                "StackDriftStatus": "NOT_CHECKED"  
            },  
            "LastOperations": [  
                {  
                    "OperationType": "ROLLBACK",  
                    "OperationId": "d0f12313-7bdb-414d-a879-828a99b36f29"  
                },  
                {  
                    "OperationType": "UPDATE_STACK",  
                    "OperationId": "1c211b5a-4538-4dc9-bfed-e07734371e57"  
                }  
            ]  
        }  
    ]  
}

Filter events by operation ID

The following describe-events command describes events for a specific operation ID:

aws cloudformation describe-events \
  --operation-id 1c211b5a-4538-4dc9-bfed-e07734371e57

To view only failed events for troubleshooting, use the --filter FailedEvents=true parameter:

aws cloudformation describe-events \
  --operation-id 1c211b5a-4538-4dc9-bfed-e07734371e57 \
  --filter FailedEvents=true

The new operation ID filtering capability allows you to focus on specific operations and their related events. This is particularly useful for:

Stack status codes

The following table describes the fields returned by the describe-events command when using operation ID filtering: