---
title: Loop continue
description: Reference for the loop.continue step, which skips to the next iteration of the innermost enclosing foreach or while loop.
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/loop-continue
products:
  - Elastic Cloud Enterprise
  - Elastic Cloud Hosted
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes
  - Elastic Stack
  - Kibana
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available since 9.4
---

# Loop continue
The `loop.continue` step skips the rest of the current iteration in the innermost enclosing [`foreach`](https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/foreach) or [`while`](https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/while) loop and moves on to the next iteration. Use it to skip items that don't meet a filter, without nesting the remaining logic inside an `if`.

## Parameters

`loop.continue` takes no parameters.

| Parameter | Location  | Type   | Required | Description              |
|-----------|-----------|--------|----------|--------------------------|
| `name`    | top level | string | Yes      | Unique step identifier.  |
| `type`    | top level | string | Yes      | Must be `loop.continue`. |


## Example: Skip benign alerts

```yaml
- name: process_alerts
  type: foreach
  foreach: "${{ event.alerts }}"
  steps:
    - name: filter_benign
      type: if
      condition: "foreach.item.kibana.alert.severity : low"
      steps:
        - name: next
          type: loop.continue

    - name: enrich
      type: virustotal.scanFileHash
      connector-id: "my-virustotal"
      with:
        hash: "{{ foreach.item.file.hash.sha256 }}"

    - name: record
      type: cases.addComment
      with:
        case_id: "{{ consts.case_id }}"
        comment: "Enriched: {{ foreach.item._id }} — {{ steps.enrich.output.stats.malicious }} hits"
```

Low-severity alerts are skipped; the loop moves on to the next alert without running `enrich` or `record`.

## Related

- [Flow control steps](https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/flow-control-steps): Overview of all flow-control types.
- [Loop break step](https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/loop-break): Exit the loop entirely instead of skipping to the next iteration.
- [Foreach step](https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/foreach) and [While step](https://www.elastic.co/docs/explore-analyze/workflows/steps/while): The loop types `loop.continue` can act on.