Release Dates

  • KIP Freeze: October 29 (Wednesday)
    • A KIP must be accepted by this date in order to be considered for this release. Note, any KIP that may not be implemented in a week, or that might destabilize the release, should be deferred.
  • Feature Freeze: November 19 (Wednesday)
    • major features merged & working on stabilisation, minor features have PR, release branch cut; anything not in this state will be automatically moved to the next release in Jira
  • Code Freeze: December 10 (Wednesday)
  • At least four weeks of stabilization will follow Code Freeze (taking holidays into account), meaning we expect to release no earlier than January 7 2026.


These dates are goals and subject to change, but we expect to stay on the Time Based Release Plan unless unexpected critical issues come up. While the earliest possible release date is 2w after code freeze, release candidates (RCs) will roll out as needed until the release vote passes.

The release manager is Christo Lolov 

How to Contribute

Before code freeze:

  • Participate in votes and discussions to land or postpone the open KIPs.
  • Review patches. We anticipate that this release, as it usually happens, will be bottlenecked mostly on reviews. The more reviewers, the more content we can fit in.
  • Write unit/integration/system tests. We want to preserve the tradition of high-quality releases in Apache Kafka. 

After code freeze:

  • Write more unit/integration/system tests. We want to preserve the tradition of high-quality releases in Apache Kafka.
  • Improve documentation.
  • Test the release candidates. 
  • Open blocker JIRAs on critical issues found. Open non-blocker JIRAs on any other issues found.
  • Fix critical bugs.
  • Review bug fixes.
  • Vote on release candidates. Even though only PMC votes are binding, community votes are super important as we evaluate the readiness of the release.

Open Issues

Key Summary T Created Updated Due Assignee Reporter P Status Resolution
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Also, feel free to refer to the 4.2.0 release page for more details of the included tickets (requires logging in to the Apache Kafka Jira project).

Planned KIP Content

Note: The planned content is not binding - the final content will be based on the features committed by the branch-cutting date.

See Kafka Improvement Proposals for the full list of KIPs.

If you do not see your KIP here and want to, please reply to the mailing list thread about the release!

KIPJIRAComponentStatus

KIP-932: Queues for Kafka

KAFKA-16092 - Getting issue details... STATUS

VariousCompleted

KIP-1034: Dead letter queue in Kafka Streams

KAFKA-16505 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsCompleted

KIP-1052: Enable warmup in producer performance test

KAFKA-17645 - Getting issue details... STATUS

TestsCompleted

KIP-1054: Support External schema in JSONConvertor

KAFKA-16913 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ConnectCompleted

KIP-1071: Streams Rebalance Protocol

KAFKA-17125 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsCompleted (limited feature set)

KIP-1100: Rename org.apache.kafka.server:type=AssignmentsManager and org.apache.kafka.storage.internals.log.RemoteStorageThreadPool metrics

KAFKA-17876 - Getting issue details... STATUS

KAFKA-19150 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1120: AppInfo metrics don't contain the client-id

KAFKA-15186 - Getting issue details... STATUS

VariousCompleted

KIP-1136: Make ConsumerGroupMetadata an interface

KAFKA-18836 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ClientsDeprecation announcement in 4.2

KIP-1146: Anchored punctuation

KAFKA-7699 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1147: Improve consistency of command-line arguments

KAFKA-19487 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ToolsCompleted

KIP-1153: Refactor Kafka Streams CloseOptions to Fluent API Style

KAFKA-18193 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsCompleted

KIP-1157: Enforce KafkaPrincipalSerde Implementation for KafkaPrincipalBuilder

KAFKA-18926 - Getting issue details... STATUS

SecurityCompleted

KIP-1160: Enable returning supported features from a specific broker

KAFKA-18786 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreIn implementation

KIP-1161: Unifying LIST-Type Configuration Validation and Default Values

KAFKA-19112 - Getting issue details... STATUS

VariousCompleted

KIP-1172: Improve EndToEndLatency Tool with argument parser and message key/header support

KAFKA-19011 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ToolsCompleted

KIP-1175: Fix the typo `PARTITIONER_ADPATIVE_PARTITIONING_ENABLE` in ProducerConfig

KAFKA-18068 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ClientsCompleted

KIP-1179: Introduce remote.log.manager.follower.thread.pool.size config

KAFKA-19237 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1180: Add generic feature level metrics

KAFKA-19254 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1186: Update AddRaftVoterRequest RPC to support auto-join

KAFKA-19400 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1188: New ConnectorClientConfigOverridePolicy with allowlist of configurations

KAFKA-19824 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ConnectCompleted

KIP-1190: Add a metric for controller thread idleness

KAFKA-19467 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1192: Add include argument to ConsumerPerformance tool

KAFKA-19498 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ToolsCompleted

KIP-1193: Deprecate MX4j support

KAFKA-19503 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreDeprecation announcement in 4.2

KIP-1195: deprecate and remove org.apache.kafka.streams.errors.BrokerNotFoundException

KAFKA-12281 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsDeprecation announcement in 4.2

KIP-1197: Introduce new method to improve the TopicBasedRemoteLogMetadataManager's initialization

KAFKA-19426 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1205: Improve RecordHeader to be Thread-Safe

KAFKA-12999 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ClientsCompleted

KIP-1206: Strict max fetch records in share fetch

KAFKA-19020 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1207: Fix anomaly of JMX metrics RequestHandlerAvgIdlePercent in kraft combined mode

KAFKA-19606 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1216: Add rebalance listener metrics for Kafka Streams

KAFKA-19691 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsCompleted

KIP-1217: Include push interval in ClientTelemetryReceiver context

KAFKA-19773 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1221: Add application-id tag to client state metric

KAFKA-19734 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsIn implementation

KIP-1222: Acquisition lock timeout renewal in share consumer explicit mode.

KAFKA-19742 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1224: Adaptive append.linger.ms for the group coordinator and share coordinator

KAFKA-19764 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1226: Introducing Share Partition Lag Persistence and Retrieval

KAFKA-19778 - Getting issue details... STATUS

VariousCompleted

KIP-1227: Expose Rack ID in MemberDescription and ShareMemberDescription

KAFKA-19784 - Getting issue details... STATUS

ToolsCompleted

KIP-1228: Add Transaction Version to WriteTxnMarkersRequest

KAFKA-19446 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreCompleted

KIP-1229: Add Idle Thread Ratio Metric to MetadataLoader

KAFKA-19791 - Getting issue details... STATUS

MetadataCompleted

KIP-1230: Add config for file system permissions

KAFKA-19803 - Getting issue details... STATUS

StreamsCompleted

Postponed to subsequent release

KIPJIRAComponentStatus

KIP-1066: Mechanism to cordon brokers and log directories

KAFKA-19774 - Getting issue details... STATUS

CoreKIP Accepted







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