Next.js multilingual routing. Main page site.com always redirect to site.com/en instead of staying on site.com

Question

devs!

I'm trying to build a multilingual website based on Next.js(15.6) Node 22.21.10. Locally I have no issue with routing everything works as expected. Both lang versions are served as expected. (have toggle in header).

Navigation doing its job. site.com gives me correct lang version and if im switching to EN all pages are served correctly in English, however after deploying it to Digital Ocean droplet breaks it(Only front page all other pages are fine).

So my question is, is that a misconfiguration in Next or should I change something in DO droplet?

Sharing my middleware.ts

import createMiddleware from 'next-intl/middleware';

export default createMiddleware({
    locales: ['ru', 'en'] as const,
    defaultLocale: 'ru',
    localePrefix: 'as-needed',
    localeDetection: false,
});

export const config = {
    matcher: ['/((?!_next|.*\\..*).*)'],
};

All my pages are in the app/[locale]/*.tsx (and subfolders for other pages)

I dont have any root page.tsx/layout.tsx

So, my question is what am I missing here?

Please, let me know if I should share more info/files

Thanks!

EDIT:

That happens only with main page. All other pages, categories, single items. e.g. site.com/items works as expected and serves right version

On the server I get 302 redirect on main page

Teguh Widodo · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-06 16:52:57Z

0

You can explicitly tell Next that / should go to /ru (or whatever your default locale is):

import { NextResponse } from 'next/server';
import createMiddleware from 'next-intl/middleware';

const intlMiddleware = createMiddleware({
  locales: ['ru', 'en'] as const,
  defaultLocale: 'ru',
  localePrefix: 'as-needed',
  localeDetection: false,
});

export default function middleware(req: Request) {
  const url = new URL(req.url);

  // Handle root path manually
  if (url.pathname === '/') {
    url.pathname = '/ru';
    return NextResponse.redirect(url);
  }

  return intlMiddleware(req);
}

export const config = {
  matcher: ['/((?!_next|.*\\..*).*)'],
};

This ensures that https://example.com/ → https://example.com/ru always works even in production. (You can redirect to /en if you prefer English default.)

answered Nov 6 at 16:52

Teguh Widodo

11 bronze badge

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

ultrapanam Nov 6 at 19:38

Thanks for reply! The issue is that I want to keep main version clean as site.com with no extension, so ru should be default, but english needs to have extension. The code you gave me generates infinite redirect loop. I was trying to modify it, no success achieved. Maybe you can think of an issue on the server form ur expirience? since locally I have no issues

ultrapanam · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-06 21:39:49Z

0

Turned out, that middleware is perfectly fine. Deploying stuff to Digital Ocean droplet I've missed to configure Nginx server correctly. On top of its configuration I've had

# Redirect root to default locale
# location = / {
#    return 302 /en;
# }

So just removing that line fixed the issue and site works as expected. So always check server conf facing discrepancies between local and prod.

answered Nov 6 at 21:39

ultrapanam

251 gold badge1 silver badge6 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Next.js multilingual routing. Main page site.com always redirect to site.com/en instead of staying on site.com

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related