Upgrade Gitlab CE 13.12.15 -> 14.0.12 failing

When trying to upgrade our test instance to gitlab/gitlab-ce:14.0.12-ce.0 I encounter the following error upon starting the container:

It seems you are upgrading from major version 13 to major version 14.
It is required to upgrade to the latest 13.0.x version first before proceeding.

What is going wrong here? It doesn’t make sense to downgrade to the newest 13.0.x before upgrading. Reverting the image to 13.12.15 in the docker-compose.yml file brings back the service with no problem.

I ran into exactly the same issue.
Came from an older version, had to go to many different upgrades.

After 13.0.0 I tried 14.10.0 without succes. Then first went to 13.12.15 and it seems now I am stuck at 13.12.15
Also was confused about the error message.