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Investigations of the use of patterned porous GaN underlayers to achieve elastic relaxation of lattice‐mismatched top layers such as InGaN and AlGaN are reviewed. Thereby, the degree of relaxation of the top layers increases with the porosity and associated decrease in mechanical hardness of the porous GaN underlayers as well as with decreasing pattern size and increase in thickness of the lattice‐mismatched top layers, following the trends observed for nanostructures. Micrometer‐sized, high‐fill‐factor GaN‐on‐porous‐GaN tile arrays are used as universal substrate for the deposition of InGaN and AlGaN. Due to the elastic nature of the relaxation process, the threading dislocation density in the epitaxial material grown on top of the GaN‐on‐porous‐GaN tiles is equivalent to that in the GaN base material. InGaN and AlGaN layers grown on top of relaxed or partially relaxed InGaN or AlGaN underlayers by metal–organic chemical vapor deposition display a higher indium or aluminum content compared to their counterparts deposited on coloaded planar GaN reference wafers due to the decreased lattice mismatch. First applications of the patterned porous GaN‐based technology for optoelectronic and electronic devices are presented and serve as a pathway toward future implementations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]