How to enable Liquid Clustering on an existing Delta Live Table (DLT) and syntax for enabling it

Sakthi0311 — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 15:05:55 GMT

Hi all,

I’m working with Delta Live Tables (DLT) and want to enable Liquid Clustering on an existing DLT table that was already created without it.

Could someone please clarify:

How can I enable Liquid Clustering on an existing DLT table (without recreating the table if possible)?
What’s the correct syntax to use for enabling Liquid Clustering — both for:
- Automatic Liquid Clustering
- Manual clustering with specific columns
  For example:
  - Should I use something like this inside the DLT notebook?
    
    CREATE OR REFRESH LIVE TABLE my_table TBLPROPERTIES ( delta.feature.liquidClustering = 'enabled', delta.liquidCluster.autoCluster = 'true') AS SELECT * FROM source_table;
    Or should it be enabled differently using ALTER TABLE?
    I’ve seen documentation about Liquid Clustering for regular Delta tables, but not much for DLT-managed tables.
    Would appreciate any working examples or syntax confirmation from someone who’s done this successfully.
    Thanks in advance!

Re: How to enable Liquid Clustering on an existing Delta Live Table (DLT) and syntax for enabling it

szymon_dybczak — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 15:42:45 GMT

szymon_dybczak — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:01:51 GMT

For SQL language you can enable LC for materialized views and streaming tables. So the syntax looks following:

If you want to use automatic clustering then use CLUSTER BY AUTO.