What events can trigger a CI/CD pipeline?

CI/CD pipelines can be triggered by a variety of events: Push to a branch — the most common trigger; run tests and build on every push to main or feature branches. Pull/Merge request — run tests and post status checks before allowing merge, enforcing quality gates. Tag push — trigger a release build and deployment when a version tag (e.g., v1.2.0) is pushed. Schedule — run nightly builds, dependency update checks, or performance tests on a cron schedule. Manual trigger — allow authorized users to manually kick off a deployment (workflow_dispatch in GitHub Actions). External webhook — trigger a pipeline from an external system (JIRA ticket status, external monitoring alert). Repository dispatch — trigger one workflow from another across different repositories, useful for multi-repo monorepo setups.