Do you mean a background-color that you specifically specified or the default background-color (which was white). Consider the following two examples: {| style="background-color: red;" ! foo |- | bar |} {| class="wikitable" ! foo |- | bar |} If the above two do not have a background color (the former from the style attribute, the latter via the "table.wikitable" css rule) on your wiki, then please file a bug as this should still work. If you mean the default background color for plain tables, eg: {| ! foo |- | bar |} then it is not a bug. This white background color was intentionally removed in 1.17. It was once added to avoid lines from headings from going through the background of a table. This was fixed in 1.17, making the background-color hack on tables, forms and thumbnails redundant. If you want to style your tables, please do so by using a default style (like class="wikitable") or by creating your own classes on the [[MediaWiki:Common.css] page of your wiki. eg. " table.foobar { background: grey; } table.foobar th { background: black; color: white; }" which creates grey tables with a black heading. or put the following on Common.css if you want the old behavior back from <1.16: " table { background-color: white; } " (without the " quotes " ); -- Krinkle On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Conor Glynn &lt;conorglynn(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: