Kubernetes v1.26 Release: New Features, Enhancements, and Deprecations

Release Theme and Logo

Kubernetes v1.26 is themed "Electrifying" and celebrates the collaborative effort of volunteers worldwide. The release includes 37 enhancements (11 stable, 10 beta, 16 alpha) and deprecates or removes 12 features.

Container Image Registry Changes

This is the first release whose binaries are published exclusively to the new registry.k8s.io registry. The old k8s.gcr.io registry will continue to receive updates only for previous versions.

CRI v1alpha2 Removal

With the adoption of CRI and the removal of dockershim in v1.24, CRI is the sole supported runtime interface. The deprecated v1alpha2 API is removed, requiring container runtimes such as containerd to be upgraded to version 1.6.0 or newer.

Storage Improvements

Continuing the CSI migration effort, several in‑tree drivers have been promoted to Stable, including vSphere and Azure File CSI drivers, and the FSGroup delegation to CSI drivers is now Stable. In‑tree GlusterFS and OpenStack Cinder drivers have been removed.

Signature and Security Enhancements

Release artifacts are now signed with cosign , enabling verification of binaries and images without keys.

Windows Privileged Containers

Support for Windows HostProcess containers has been promoted to Stable, allowing privileged container access to host resources.

Kubernetes Metrics Improvements

New metric documentation has been added, and feature metrics are now exposed via the kubernetes_feature_enabled endpoint. Component Service Level Indicators (SLIs) have been upgraded to Alpha.

Dynamic Resource Allocation

A new Alpha feature enables dynamic resource allocation using the Container Device Interface (CDI), allowing third‑party developers to request countable resources such as GPUs.

Admission Control CEL Upgrade

Validating admission policies now support the Common Expression Language (CEL) for more expressive policy definitions.

Pod Scheduling Improvements

New fields like .spec.schedulingGates and NodeInclusionPolicyInPodTopologySpread give finer control over pod scheduling and topology spread.

Other Updates

Upgrades to Stable

Support for Windows privileged containers

vSphere in‑tree to CSI driver migration

Allow Kubernetes to supply pod's FSGroup to CSI driver on mount

Azure File in‑tree to CSI driver migration

Job tracking without lingering Pods

Service Internal Traffic Policy

Kubelet Credential Provider

Support of mixed protocols in Services with type=LoadBalancer

Reserve Service IP Ranges for dynamic and static IP allocation

CPUManager

DeviceManager

Deprecations and Removals

CRI v1alpha2 API removed

v1beta1 flow‑control API group removed

v2beta2 HorizontalPodAutoscaler API removed

GlusterFS in‑tree driver removed

Legacy logging command‑line arguments removed

kube-proxy userspace modes removed

In‑tree credential management code removed

In‑tree OpenStack cloud provider removed

Dynamic kubelet configuration removed

Non‑inclusive kubectl flag deprecated

Deprecated kube-apiserver command‑line arguments

Deprecated kubectl run command‑line arguments

Release Notes and Download

Full details are available in the official release notes. The binaries, images, and documentation can be downloaded from the Kubernetes website, with quick‑start options via interactive tutorials, kind , or kubeadm .