Restoring a Deleted Repository from a Organization Account

[nammahari]

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I’m reaching out for urgent assistance regarding a critical issue we’ve encountered with one of our organization’s repositories.

Few hours ago, a production repository was accidentally deleted from our organization account. Unfortunately, it is not appearing in the "Deleted Repositories" section, which is preventing us from initiating a restore.

Details:
Organization Name: FOSS United Chennai
Repository Name: Communities
Deleted By: nammahari
Date of Deletion: 19th May, 2025
Visibility: Public
Fork Status: The repository has been forked by multiple external contributors

Despite being recently deleted, the repository does not appear under our organization’s Settings > Deleted Repositories, where we would normally expect to find it for recovery.

This repository is important for our production workflows and community collaboration, and we’re hoping GitHub Support can help us investigate whether recovery is still possible.

If anyone from the GitHub team or community has insight into this kind of issue especially how to recover a repo that doesn’t appear in the deleted list we’d greatly appreciate your guidance.

Thanks so much for your time and help.

[Hanashiko]

Hi @nammahari,

Thank you for reaching out, and I’m really sorry to hear about the situation — I can understand how stressful and critical this must be, especially given the importance of the repository to your production workflows and community.

Normally, as you mentioned, deleted repositories should appear under the organization's Settings > Deleted Repositories section for a limited time window (typically 90 days for public repos), during which they can be restored by an organization owner. The fact that it's not showing there is definitely unusual and may indicate either a delay in synchronization or an edge case affecting visibility.

Given the urgency and the potential impact on your organization and contributors, I highly recommend the following immediate steps:

1. Submit a GitHub Support Request directly via the GitHub Support contact form. Be sure to include:
   • The full organization and repository name (FOSSUnitedChennai/Communities)
   • Username of the individual who deleted it
   • Approximate time of deletion
   • A clear note that it is not appearing under "Deleted Repositories"
   • Any supporting links or screenshots
2. If you're on a paid plan (such as GitHub Team or Enterprise Cloud), make sure to select the appropriate support level to receive prioritized help.
3. In the meantime, you may want to check whether any of the forks are up-to-date enough to serve as a base for temporary recovery, should GitHub Support require more time.

Please do keep us updated on how things go — this information might be invaluable to others facing a similar issue in the future.

Wishing you the very best with the recovery. Let us know if there’s anything else the community can assist with.

[nammahari]

Thanks @Hanashiko

[datumradix]

@nammahari any luck?

[nammahari]

@nammahari any luck?

Yes, got the repo back .