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Release Dates
- KIP Freeze: February 25 2026 (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: March 18 2026 (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: April 8 2026 (Wednesday)
- At least four weeks of stabilization will follow Code Freeze (taking holidays into account), meaning we expect to release no earlier than May 6 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 Mickael Maison
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
Also, feel free to refer to the 4.3.0 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!
| KIP | JIRA | Component | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
KAFKA-20194 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Partially Implemented | |
KAFKA-19149 - Getting issue details... STATUS | MirrorMaker | Complete | |
| KIP-1274: Deprecate and remove support for Classic rebalance protocol in KafkaConsumer (Phase 1) | KAFKA-20282 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Clients | Complete |
KAFKA-20079 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Connect | Complete | |
KAFKA-20056 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Partially Implemented | |
KAFKA-19939 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Complete | |
KAFKA-20209 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Group Coordinator | Batching part complete in 4.3; Offloading deferred to 4.4. | |
KAFKA-19943 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Complete | |
KAFKA-18608 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Clients | Complete | |
| KIP-1257: Partition Size Percentage Metrics for Storage Monitoring | KAFKA-20157 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Storage | Complete |
KAFKA-17895 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Complete | |
KAFKA-17939 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Complete | |
KAFKA-19976 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Complete | |
KAFKA-20037 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-20229 - Getting issue details... STATUS | MirrorMaker | Complete | |
KAFKA-19740 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-19858 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-19541 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-19655 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-19590 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-19519 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-19774 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Core | Complete | |
KAFKA-17411 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Streams | Complete | |
KAFKA-20066 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Group Coordinator | Complete |
Postponed to subsequent release
| KIP | JIRA | Component | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
KAFKA-20113 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Connect | Under discussion | |
KAFKA-19193 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Clients | KIP Accepted | |
| KIP-909: DNS Resolution Failure Should Not Fail the Clients | KAFKA-14648 - Getting issue details... STATUS | Clients | KIP Accepted |