Week 5 - January 2026

This week: 50 releases, 182 news items.

👋 Welcome

This week in Cloud Native was heavily influenced by the deepening integration of AI, with new survey data highlighting Kubernetes’ pivotal role as the foundational infrastructure for AI workloads. We also saw a strong focus on platform engineering best practices and a steady stream of updates across critical projects in GitOps, observability, and security.

🚀 Notable Releases

Cloud Native Runtime & Tools

  • Dapr v1.16.7 - This update includes bug fixes related to trace information in pubsub components, Pulsar pubsub initialization, and HTTP endpoint ClientTLS parsing.
  • Telepresence v2.26.0 - A new feature release providing official release artifacts for Linux and OSX Darwin.
  • Skopeo v1.11.4 - Includes a fix for CVE-2025-65637 related to Logrus.
  • Skopeo v1.11.3 - Features updates to ocicrypt and go-jose to address a CVE-2024-2.
  • Buildah v1.21.6 - This release replaces registry.centos.org and includes conformance test fixes for file type bits and trailing zeroes in layer blobs.

Observability & Monitoring

  • Prometheus v3.5.1 - The current Long Term Support release, built with Go 1.24.11 and updated Docker library dependencies.
  • OpenTelemetry Collector v0.144.0 - Introduces breaking changes by changing verbosity for otelcol_exporter_queue_batch_send_size metric and removing deprecated feature gates.
  • Grafana Loki v3.6.4 - Adds rules checks for namespace and group, and includes a backported gzip fix.
  • Grafana Tempo v2.9.1 - Upgrades Tempo to Go 1.25.5.
  • Grafana Tempo v2.8.3 - Also upgrades Tempo to Go 1.25.5 and fixes a deadlock on invalid query to api/v2/search/tags among other bug fixes.
  • OpenObserve v0.50.3 - Addresses sync issues for user and RUM token updates, and fixes histogram interval validation.
  • OpenObserve v0.50.2 - Fixes pipeline destination text cutoff and histogram interval issues for the view panel.
  • OpenObserve v0.50.1 - Contains fixes for RUM auto-refresh, root user password changes, and service graph updates.
  • OpenObserve v0.50.0 - Features various fixes including redirect to login on unauthorized errors and dashboard configuration issues.

GitOps & Package Management

  • Argo CD v3.2.6 - A patch release focusing on quick start instructions and emphasizing release signatures and provenance for container images.
  • Argo CD v3.1.12 - Another patch release providing installation manifests and detailing release signatures and provenance.
  • Argo CD v3.0.23 - A maintenance release with quick start guides and information on signed container images.
  • Helm v4.1.0 - A feature release, encouraging users to upgrade for the best experience and highlighting community engagement.
  • Helm v3.20.0 - Another feature release, recommending upgrades and inviting participation in the Helm community.

Security & Compliance

  • External Secrets v1.3.1 - A fix build for the Docker publish flow, following the v1.3.0 release.
  • External Secrets v1.3.0 - This release was noted as initially broken due to image promotion issues, with changes included in v1.3.1.
  • External Secrets helm-chart-1.3.1 - The Helm chart release for external secrets management in Kubernetes.
  • Kubescape v3.0.48 - Includes updates such as a SkipPersistence flag for metrics endpoints and fixes for workload scans missing controls.
  • Sigstore Rekor v1.5.0 - Addresses vulnerabilities (GHSA-273p-m2cw-6833 and GHSA-4c4x-jm2x-pf9j) and drops support for fetching public keys via URL in the search API.

Service Mesh & Developer Portals

  • Istio v1.28.3 - A maintenance release for the service mesh, providing access to artifacts and release notes.
  • Meshery v0.8.200 - Features UI improvements, including enabling React strict mode, and various fixes for the Meshery CLI.
  • Backstage v1.47.1 - A patch release that fixes a deprecation warning and restores React 17 compatibility for @backstage/ui.
  • Backstage v1.47.0 - A major release featuring a redesigned Table component and useTable hook in @backstage/ui.
  • Backstage v1.46.4 - Contains backports of security fixes originally part of the v1.47 release.
  • Backstage v1.45.4 - Also includes backported security fixes from the v1.47 release.
  • Backstage v1.43.4 - Provides backported security fixes from the v1.47 release.

Storage & Cluster Management

  • Rook v1.19.0 - Introduces breaking changes with updated Kubernetes (v1.30-v1.35) and Ceph (v19.2.0) version requirements, and changes to CephFilesystem’s activeStandby property.
  • Cluster API v1.12.2 - Supports Kubernetes v1.31.x to v1.35.x for management clusters and v1.29.x to v1.35.x for workload clusters, with 4 bugs fixed.
  • Cluster API v1.11.5 - Supports Kubernetes v1.30.x to v1.34.x for management clusters and v1.28.x to v1.34.x for workload clusters, also with 4 bugs fixed.

📰 This Week in Cloud Native

This week’s cloud native landscape was dominated by the pervasive influence of Artificial Intelligence, with significant insights emerging from the CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey. The survey emphatically positions Kubernetes as the “de facto operating system” for AI, revealing that production use of Kubernetes has surged to 82%. This trend underscores Kubernetes’ crucial role as the foundational infrastructure for modern AI workloads, though the CNCF also highlighted that organizational culture remains a decisive factor in leveraging AI’s full potential. Discussions also focused on optimizing resource utilization, particularly reclaiming underutilized GPUs within Kubernetes clusters through scheduler plugins, a critical concern given the high cost of AI hardware. The concept of the “autonomous enterprise” driven by AI agents is projected to become a core mechanism for automation by 2026, pushing the boundaries of platform control.

Platform engineering continues to evolve, with a strong emphasis on maintaining internal platforms to balance developer velocity and enterprise governance. The CNCF provided valuable insights into common maintenance pitfalls and strategies to overcome them, reinforcing the discipline’s importance. Projects like Headlamp showcased their progress in enhancing developer experience, while OpenCost outlined its roadmap for improving cost and resource management in the cloud native space. The Kubernetes community also introduced a new Checkpoint/Restore Working Group, signaling ongoing efforts to enhance the resilience and operational capabilities of Kubernetes clusters.

Security remained a key area of attention, with discussions around strengthening the software supply chain and addressing vulnerabilities. Projects like Sigstore Rekor released updates specifically to fix security vulnerabilities, highlighting the continuous effort to secure cloud native environments. The rise of AI also brought new security considerations, with reports of AI agents being reprogrammed via exploits and concerns about the proliferation of security tools potentially slowing down incident response rather than accelerating it. On the observability front, the community grappled with the “new blind spot” created by LLMs in traditional observability paradigms, spurring the development of new tools and approaches to monitor AI-driven applications effectively.

Beyond these major themes, the ecosystem saw a flurry of updates across various projects. Helm released new versions, strengthening its role in package management. GitOps tools like Argo CD received multiple patch releases, emphasizing stability and security through release signatures. Observability projects such as OpenTelemetry, Grafana Loki, Grafana Tempo, and OpenObserve continued their development cycles, bringing new features and critical bug fixes to help practitioners gain deeper insights into their distributed systems.

💬 Community Buzz

Hacker News discussions this week reflected the industry’s deep dive into AI, with many conversations revolving around AI agents and the critical need for robust sandboxing solutions using tools like Docker, VMs, or specific projects like Lima-devbox. There was also considerable interest in the evolving role of Docker, from its current state to new tools for managing container logs side-by-side. The community actively explored the future of cloud-native databases, debating elasticity and unified data stacks like Postgres and ClickHouse, alongside the emergence of lightweight, edge-native API gateways. Developer experience tools, including context managers for cloud/Kubernetes and AI-powered command-line assistants, also garnered significant attention.

📊 Week in Numbers

  • 34 stable releases across 19 projects
  • 82% of organizations are now using Kubernetes in production for AI workloads, according to the 2025 CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey.

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