dbt-labs/dbt-core

[Adapter Auth] BigQuery Workload Identity Federation (WIF) / External OAuth

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#14,545 opened on Apr 23, 2026

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Description

Overview

Add support for GCP Workload Identity Federation (WIF) in the dbt-fusion BigQuery adapter.

WIF allows BigQuery authentication to be delegated to an external OIDC provider, enabling keyless auth flows commonly used in CI/CD environments and multi-cloud setups. This is a significant auth method for large BigQuery customers and is blocking Fusion adoption for some of them.

What needs to be implemented

The BigQuery adapter should support the external_oauth / WIF credential path. The reference implementation in dbt-adapters can be found here:

https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-adapters/blob/1f3f529dc713f493a74514feb3ab239ed7fc7cf6/dbt-bigquery/src/dbt/adapters/bigquery/credentials.py#L254

Reference

Contributor guide

Research direction
Study the reference implementation in dbt adapters for BigQuery WIF/external oauth credentials and adapt the credential class in dbt core.
Tech stack
pythongcp
Domain
backend
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
4
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Mostly clear
Prerequisites
GitPythonBigQuery
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
20