Week Ending October 5, 2025

Developer News

Joaquim Rocha has been nominated to be one of the new SIG UI leads. Congrats Joaquim!

Folks are discussing the deprecation of cgroups v1. Find the whole discussion in the mailing list here

There are some updates in the release informing and blocking jobs to improve alpha/beta coverage. Find the full list of jobs moved to release informing and blocking status here

Release Schedule

Next Deadline: Enhancements Freeze, October 16

All enhancements are expected to have met the requirements by the freeze. Those that don’t meet the requirements will be removed from the milestone and will require an Exception.

Kubernetes v1.35.0-alpha.1 is out!

The cherry-pick deadline for patch releases is Oct 10.

Steering Committee Election

The Steering Committee Election voting ends on Friday, 24th October, AoE. You can check your eligibility to vote in the voting app, and file an exception request by October 22 if you need an exception. Don’t forget to cast your votes if you haven’t already!

Featured PRs

133697: Codify feature gate dependencies

With this PR, feature gate dependencies can be explicitly declared and enforced. This has been ad-hoc or implicit in the past. Components will now refuse to start if a feature is enabled without its required dependencies. Feature Owners should review the backfilled dependencies, while users who manually toggle feature gates must ensure dependent features are also enabled—especially noting that AllAlpha=true now requires AllBeta=true or equivalent beta features to be set.

KEP of the Week

KEP 859: Include kubectl command metadata in http request headers

This KEP aims to add extra HTTP headers to kubectl requests sent to the Kubernetes apiserver. These headers would share details such as which kubectl command was used, the flags included, a session ID, and whether the command is deprecated. This would help cluster administrators understand how users interact with the cluster, making it easier to debug issues, track usage, and gather insights, without exposing any sensitive data.

This KEP is tracked for GA in v1.35

Other Merges

Disable SchedulerAsyncAPICalls feature gate to prevent scheduler performance issues under high API server load.
Add path normalization to error matcher for improved field validation.
DeviceClass now enforces a maximum of 32 selectors and configs via declarative validation.
Add declarative validation +k8s:maxItems tag to ResourceClaim
HPA controller now exposes desired_replicas metric to track scaling history.
Fix preemptor pod behavior to prevent endless scheduling loops during slow victim deletion.
Feature gate dependencies are now explicit and validated at startup, preventing enabling a feature if its dependencies are disabled.
kube-scheduler introduces lightweight AssumeCache in VolumeBinding plugin to fix occasional pod scheduling delays.

Version Updates

etcd to v3.6.5

Subprojects and Dependency Updates

cluster-api v1.11.2 extends Kubernetes support to v1.34 for both management and workload clusters, adds CoreDNS migration v1.0.28, and introduces Metal3 as an IPAM provider.
cluster-api v1.10.7 adds Kubernetes v1.33 compatibility and updates CoreDNS migration to v1.0.28.
coredns v1.13.1 updates Go to v1.25.2 to address security issues, improves performance, and enhances the sign plugin by rejecting invalid UTF-8 tokens.
coredns v1.13.0 introduces a new Nomad plugin, fixes Corefile loop and import issues, improves shutdown handling, and hardens gRPC and reload behavior.
containerd API v1.10.0-beta.1 adds a mount manager and aligns with containerd 2.2 APIs (pre-release).
kOps v1.34.0-beta.1 updates AWS and Azure components (VPC CNI v1.20.2, Cilium v1.18.2, Calico v3.30.3), upgrades etcd to v3.6.5, drops Canal support, and removes Kubernetes 1.28 compatibility.
autoscaler vertical-pod-autoscaler v1.5.1 updates the default VPA version and client-go dependency to improve stability.
autoscaler cluster-autoscaler-chart v0.1.1 introduces automatic resource adjustment for workloads through Helm.
csi-driver-nfs v4.12.0 updates Go to 1.24, fixes a goroutine leak, and adds support for creating multiple storage classes with Helm.
csi-driver-smb v1.19.0 improves secret handling with special characters, updates CSI sidecars and resizer to v1.14.0, and adds Helm support for multiple storage classes.
headlamp v0.36.0 adds support for EndpointSlice resources, label-based search, and clipboard copy for resource names. It improves table sorting memory, standardizes resource naming, and enhances Helm charts with optional PodDisruptionBudget, backend TLS termination, and security context updates. The release also fixes several UI issues, improves plugin management, and updates shipped Prometheus and App Catalog plugins.

Shoutouts

Drew Hagen – I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge @Matteo for the seriously impressive leadership of a newer release branch management shadow program for the 1.34 release, and all the amazing work putting together strong documentation for branch management!! I remember my experience releasing alpha 3 being very clear what to do and going really smooth. Very little tribal knowledge. And we did most releases async, which I think speaks to how strong this handbook is. I thank you for still being around to observe and help, even if it meant some later nights in your time zone. @xmudrii @jimangel Great work! Y’all have set the foundation for many more cycles to come. Thank you for all of your patience, guidance and support. It was really great learning and working with you all @Angelos Kolaitis @satyampsoni

Last Week In Kubernetes Development (LWKD) is a product of multiple contributors participating in Kubernetes SIG Contributor Experience. All original content is licensed Creative Commons Share-Alike, although linked content and images may be differently licensed. LWKD does collect some information on readers, see our privacy notice for details.

You may contribute to LWKD by submitting pull requests or issues on the LWKD github repo.