Kubernetes v1.35 Release Cycle Kicks Off: What to Expect

The Kubernetes community has officially kicked off the v1.35 release cycle, scheduled for release in December 2025. This release cycle marks another milestone in Kubernetes’ evolution, with the development phase beginning in September 2025 and key milestones already approaching. The v1.35 release is expected to bring significant enhancements across performance, security, and developer experience.

The v1.35 release follows the established Kubernetes release cadence:

• Enhancement Proposals Due: September 15, 2025
• Enhancements Freeze: October 17, 2025
• Code Freeze: November 7, 2025
• Release Candidates: Late November - Early December 2025
• General Availability: December 17, 2025 (tentative)

The v1.35 release team is led by experienced community members from across the Kubernetes ecosystem, coordinating efforts across multiple Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and organizations.

The Kubernetes scheduler continues to receive significant improvements:

• Multi-dimensional Resource Scheduling: Better consideration of CPU, memory, storage, and network resources
• Cost-aware Scheduling: Consideration of resource costs in scheduling decisions
• Energy-efficient Placement: Optimization for reduced power consumption
• Network-aware Scheduling: Better consideration of network topology and latency

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: scheduled-pod
spec:
  schedulerName: default-scheduler
  affinity:
    nodeAffinity:
      preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:
      - weight: 100
        preference:
          matchExpressions:
          - key: node-cost
            operator: In
            values:
            - low-cost
      - weight: 50
        preference:
          matchExpressions:
          - key: network-region
            operator: In
            values:
            - same-region
  containers:
  - name: app
    image: nginx:latest

Security continues to be a top priority with several enhancements planned:

• Improved Pod Security Standards: More granular security policies
• Context-aware Security: Security decisions based on workload context
• Enhanced Security Context: Better integration with security frameworks
• Runtime Security: Improved container runtime security features

• Advanced Network Policies: Enhanced network policy capabilities
• Micro-segmentation: Granular network security policies
• Zero Trust Integration: Better support for zero trust architectures
• Encrypted Communication: Enhanced encryption for inter-component communication

Observability features are expected to receive major updates:

Building on the structured logging introduced in v1.30:

{
  "level": "info",
  "timestamp": "2025-11-01T10:30:00Z",
  "component": "kube-scheduler",
  "message": "Pod scheduled successfully",
  "pod": "nginx-deployment-abc123",
  "node": "worker-node-1",
  "namespace": "default",
  "scheduling_duration_ms": 15.2,
  "resource_requirements": {
    "cpu": "100m",
    "memory": "128Mi"
  },
  "affinity_decisions": {
    "preferred": 2,
    "required": 0
  }
}

• Custom Metrics API: Better support for custom metrics
• Performance Metrics: More detailed performance metrics
• Resource Utilization: Enhanced resource utilization tracking
• Cost Metrics: Cost-related metrics for resource optimization

Storage capabilities are expected to receive enhancements:

• Volume Snapshots: Enhanced snapshot capabilities
• Dynamic Provisioning: Improved dynamic storage provisioning
• Storage Capacity Tracking: More accurate storage capacity management
• Multi-attach Volumes: Better support for shared storage

apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
  name: fast-ssd
provisioner: csi-driver.example.com
parameters:
  type: ssd
  iops: "3000"
  replication: "3"
allowVolumeExpansion: true
volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer

The Kubernetes API continues to evolve:

• Enhanced Validation: Better API validation and error messages
• API Performance: Improved API server performance
• Backward Compatibility: Continued focus on backward compatibility
• API Versioning: Better API version management

Enhanced CRD capabilities:

apiVersion: apiextensions.k8s.io/v1
kind: CustomResourceDefinition
metadata:
  name: applications.example.com
spec:
  group: example.com
  versions:
  - name: v1
    served: true
    storage: true
    schema:
      openAPIV3Schema:
        type: object
        properties:
          spec:
            type: object
            x-kubernetes-validations:
            - rule: "self.replicas > 0"
              message: "replicas must be greater than 0"

Gateway API support continues to mature:

• Stable HTTPRoute: Enhanced HTTPRoute capabilities
• TLSRoute Improvements: Better TLS routing support
• Cross-namespace Routing: Enhanced cross-namespace capabilities
• Traffic Management: Advanced traffic splitting and mirroring

Role-Based Access Control improvements:

• Conditional RBAC: Context-aware authorization
• Fine-grained Permissions: More granular access control
• Dynamic Policy Evaluation: Real-time policy enforcement
• Audit Enhancements: Comprehensive security event tracking

Resource management enhancements:

• Dynamic Resource Allocation: Better resource sharing
• GPU Management: Enhanced GPU resource allocation
• Memory Optimization: Improved memory management
• Network Resource Management: Advanced network resource allocation

WebAssembly support continues to evolve:

• Performance Improvements: Better Wasm runtime performance
• Security Enhancements: Enhanced Wasm sandboxing
• Developer Tools: Better debugging and monitoring
• Ecosystem Integration: Improved toolchain integration

Edge computing features:

• Lightweight Components: Optimized for edge devices
• Offline Operation: Better support for intermittent connectivity
• Local Processing: Reduced dependency on centralized resources
• Multi-cluster Management: Coordinated edge deployments

Enhanced AI/ML capabilities:

• Model Serving: Better ML model deployment
• Training Optimization: Enhanced training workload management
• Resource Scheduling: AI/ML-aware resource allocation
• Monitoring: Specialized monitoring for ML workloads

The scheduler is expected to receive performance improvements:

• Faster Algorithms: Improved scheduling algorithms
• Parallel Processing: Better utilization of multiple cores
• Memory Efficiency: Reduced memory footprint
• Scalability: Better performance at scale

API server performance enhancements:

• Reduced Latency: Faster request processing
• Better Caching: Enhanced caching mechanisms
• Connection Optimization: Improved connection pooling
• Resource Efficiency: Lower resource consumption

etcd, the backing store, receives optimizations:

• Storage Efficiency: More efficient data storage
• Faster Operations: Improved read and write performance
• Better Compression: Enhanced data compression
• Improved Reliability: Better fault tolerance

Several features are expected to be deprecated in v1.35:

• Legacy API Versions: Older API versions being phased out
• Deprecated Flags: Command-line flags no longer recommended
• Obsolete Configurations: Configuration options with better alternatives

Features that may be removed:

• Unused Components: Components no longer maintained
• Deprecated APIs: APIs deprecated for multiple releases
• Legacy Tools: Tools replaced by newer alternatives

The v1.35 release cycle involves:

• Contributors: Developers from around the world
• Organizations: Companies of all sizes contributing
• SIGs: Special Interest Groups coordinating development
• Testing: Comprehensive testing across environments

Key testing focus areas:

• Stability: Ensuring stable releases
• Performance: Validating performance improvements
• Security: Security testing and validation
• Compatibility: Backward compatibility testing

Organizations should prepare for v1.35 by:

• Reviewing Deprecations: Understanding what features will be deprecated
• Testing Applications: Ensuring applications work with new features
• Updating Tools: Updating kubectl and other client tools
• Planning Migration: Creating migration plans for deprecated features

Recommended upgrade approach:

1. Review Release Notes: Understand all changes and deprecations
2. Staging Environment: Test upgrades in staging first
3. Gradual Rollout: Use rolling upgrades for production
4. Monitoring: Closely monitor during and after upgrades
5. Rollback Plan: Have rollback procedures ready

The v1.35 release focuses on:

• Performance: Continued performance improvements
• Security: Enhanced security features
• Developer Experience: Better tooling and debugging
• Observability: Improved monitoring and observability

The community is already planning beyond v1.35:

• v1.36: Scheduled for release in 2026
• Long-term Roadmap: Simplification, edge computing, AI/ML support
• Community Evolution: Continued growth and diversity

Ways to contribute to v1.35:

• Enhancement Proposals: Submit enhancement proposals (before freeze date)
• Code Contributions: Contribute code to features you’re interested in
• Testing: Help test release candidates
• Documentation: Improve documentation and examples
• Bug Reports: Report bugs and issues

Stay up to date with v1.35 development:

• Release Team: Follow release team communications
• SIG Meetings: Attend relevant SIG meetings
• GitHub: Monitor enhancement tracking issues
• Community Forums: Participate in community discussions

The v1.35 release cycle represents another exciting phase in Kubernetes’ evolution. With a focus on performance, security, observability, and developer experience, this release promises to bring significant improvements to the platform.

Key highlights of the v1.35 release cycle:

• Enhanced Scheduling: Advanced scheduling capabilities and algorithms
• Security Improvements: Enhanced security features and policies
• Observability: Better monitoring and observability capabilities
• Performance: Continued performance optimizations
• Community: Global collaboration and contribution

As the release cycle progresses through enhancement freeze, code freeze, and release candidates, the community continues to work together to deliver another stable, feature-rich Kubernetes release. Organizations should monitor the development progress and begin planning for upgrades to v1.35.

The v1.35 release cycle demonstrates the Kubernetes community’s commitment to continuous improvement, innovation, and stability, ensuring that Kubernetes remains the foundation of modern cloud-native computing.

For the latest information on v1.35 development, follow the Kubernetes SIG-Release discussions and community meetings.