Hi Christo, This is awesome. Thanks for running the release. Thanks, Andrew
> On 17 Feb 2026, at 14:48, Christo Lolov <[email protected]> wrote: > > The Apache Kafka community is pleased to announce the release for > Apache Kafka 4.2.0 > > This release has many exciting changes: > > * Kafka Queues (Share Groups) is now production-ready with new > features like the RENEW acknowledgement type for extended processing > times, adaptive batching for share coordinators, soft and strict > enforcements of quantity of fetched records, and comprehensive lag > metrics. > * Kafka Streams brings the server-side rebalance protocol to GA with a > limited feature set, adds dead letter queue support in exception > handlers, introduces anchored wall-clock punctuation for deterministic > scheduling, and gives users full control over whether to send a leave > group request on closing. > * This release also delivers significant improvements to consistency > and observability: CLI tools now feature standardized arguments like > –bootstrap-server across all tools, metric naming has been corrected > to follow the kafka.COMPONENT convention, and new idle ratio metrics > provide better visibility into controller and MetadataLoader > performance. > * Security is enhanced with a new allowlist connector client > configuration override policy, while thread-safety improvements to > RecordHeader eliminate concurrency risks. > * Additional highlights include external schema support in > JsonConverter for reduced message sizes, dynamic configuration for > remote log manager thread pools, adaptive batching in group > coordinators, and rack ID exposure in the Admin API for consumer and > share group members. > > All of the changes in this release can be found in the release notes: > https://www.apache.org/dist/kafka/4.2.0/RELEASE_NOTES.html > > An overview of the release can be found in our announcement blog post: > https://kafka.apache.org/blog > > You can download the source and binary release (Scala 2.13) from: > https://kafka.apache.org/downloads#4.2.0 > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform with four core APIs: > > ** The Producer API allows an application to publish a stream of records to > one or more Kafka topics. > > ** The Consumer API allows an application to subscribe to one or more > topics and process the stream of records produced to them. > > ** The Streams API allows an application to act as a stream processor, > consuming an input stream from one or more topics and producing an > output stream to one or more output topics, effectively transforming the > input streams to output streams. > > ** The Connector API allows building and running reusable producers or > consumers that connect Kafka topics to existing applications or data > systems. For example, a connector to a relational database might > capture every change to a table. > > > With these APIs, Kafka can be used for two broad classes of application: > > ** Building real-time streaming data pipelines that reliably get data > between systems or applications. > > ** Building real-time streaming applications that transform or react > to the streams of data. > > > Apache Kafka is in use at large and small companies worldwide, including > Capital One, Goldman Sachs, ING, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pinterest, Rabobank, > Target, The New York Times, Uber, Yelp, and Zalando, among others. > > A big thank you for the following 155 contributors to this release! > (Please report an unintended omission) > > Abhi Tiwari, Abhijeet Kumar, Abhinav Dixit, Abhiram98, Alex, Alieh > Saeedi, ally heev, Alyssa Huang, Andrew J Schofield, Anton Vasanth, > Apoorv Mittal, Arpit Goyal, Artem Livshits, Bill Bejeck, Bolin Lin, > Bruno Cadonna, Calvin Liu, Chang-Chi Hsu, Chang-Yu Huang, Chia-Ping > Tsai, Chih-Yuan Chien, Chirag Wadhwa, Chris Egerton, Christo Lolov, > Chuckame, Clemens Hutter, Colin Patrick McCabe, d00791190, Dave > Troiano, David Arthur, David Jacot, Deep Golani, Dejan Stojadinović, > devtrace404, Dmitry Werner, Dongnuo Lyu, Donny Nadolny, Eduwer > Camacaro, Elizabeth Bennett, EME, Eric Chang, Erik Anderson, Evan > Zhou, Evgeniy Kuvardin, farzan ghalami, Fatih, Federico Valeri, > Gantigmaa Selenge, Gasparina Damien, Gaurav Narula, Genseric Ghiro, > George Wu, Greg Harris, Harish Vishwanath, Herman Kolstad Jakobsen, > Hong-Yi Chen, Ismael Juma, Izzy Harker, Jared Harley, Jhen-Yung Hsu, > Jian, Jim Galasyn, Jimmy Wang, Jing-Jia Hung, Jinhe Zhang, Joel > Hamill, Jonah Hooper, Josep Prat, José Armando García Sancio, Juha > Mynttinen, Jun Rao, Justine Olshan, k-apol, Kamal Chandraprakash, > Kaushik Raina, keemsisi, Ken Huang, Kevin Wu, Kirk True, knoxy5467, > KTKTK-HZ, Kuan-Po Tseng, Lan Ding, Levani Kokhreidze, Liam > Clarke-Hutchinson, Lianet Magrans, Linsiyuan9, Logan Zhu, lorcan, Lord > of Abyss, Lucas Brutschy, Lucy Liu, Luke Chen, Mahsa Seifikar, > majialong, Manikumar Reddy, Maros Orsak, Masahiro Mori, Mason Chen, > Matt Welch, Matthias J. Sax, Michael Knox, Michael Morris, Mickael > Maison, Ming-Yen Chung, NeatGuyCoding, Nick Guo, NICOLAS GUYOMAR, > Nikita Shupletsov, Now, Okada Haruki, Omnia Ibrahim, Otmar Ertl, OuO, > Paolo Patierno, Patrik Nagy, Pawel Szymczyk, PoAn Yang, Ken Huang, > Priyanka K U, Rajani K, Rajini Sivaram, Ram, Ritika Reddy, Robert > Young, Ryan Dielhenn, S.Y. Wang, samarth-ksolves, Sanskar Jhajharia, > Satish Duggana, Sean Quah, Sebastien Viale, Shang-Hao Yang, Shashank, > Shivsundar R, Siyang He, Sophie Blee-Goldman, Stig Døssing, stroller, > Sushant Mahajan, TaiJuWu, TengYao Chi, Tsung-Han Ho (Miles Ho), > Ubuntu, Uladzislau Blok, Vincent PÉRICART, Xiao Yang, xijiu, > Xuan-Zhang Gong, yangxuze, Yeikel Santana, Yu-Syuan Jheng, YuChia Ma, > Yunchi Pang, Yung > > We welcome your help and feedback. For more information on how to > report problems, and to get involved, visit the project website at > https://kafka.apache.org/ > > Thank you! > > > Regards, > Christo > Release Manager for Apache Kafka 4.2.0
