What’s New in the Helm Charts

This topic includes new content and significant changes in the Redpanda and Redpanda Console Helm charts. For a complete list of all updates, see:

See also:

Redpanda chart v25.2.1

Changelog.

New chart-wide podTemplate field

You can now use the chart-wide podTemplate field to control Pod attributes across all components. This field has lower precedence than statefulset.podTemplate and post_install_job.podTemplate but will be merged with them.

Additionally, podTemplate fields now support template expressions within string fields, allowing you to use Helm templating for dynamic values:

podTemplate:
  annotations:
    "release-name": '{{ .Release.Name }}'

This compensates for functionality lost with the removal of fields like extraVolumes, while being more maintainable and less error prone.

Improved config-watcher sidecar

The config-watcher sidecar is now a dedicated Go binary that handles user management and simplifies cluster health checks. Health checks no longer fail when the sole issue is that other nodes in the cluster are unavailable.

rpk debug bundle now works by default

The chart now creates Roles and RoleBindings that satisfy the requirements for running rpk debug bundle --namespace from any Redpanda Pod. These permissions may be disabled by setting rbac.rpkDebugBundle=false.

The Redpanda container now always has a Kubernetes ServiceAccount token mounted to ensure rpk debug bundle can be executed successfully.

ServiceAccount creation now enabled by default

The serviceAccount.create field now defaults to true. Previously, the chart used the default ServiceAccount and extended it with all bindings.

Stricter schema validation

Any unexpected values now result in a validation error. Previously, unexpected values would have been silently ignored.

Ensure your Helm values only include valid fields before upgrading.

Redpanda Console v3.1.0

The Console dependency has been updated to v3.1.0. The Console integration (console.enabled=true) now uses the chart-managed bootstrap user rather than the first user from auth.sasl.users.

Deprecated Helm values

The following Helm values are deprecated and will be removed in a future release:

  • statefulset.sidecars.controllers.image: Use statefulset.sidecars.image instead

  • statefulset.sideCars.controllers.createRBAC: Use rbac.enabled or per-controller settings instead

  • statefulset.sideCars.controllers.run: Use individual controller enabled fields instead

Removed Helm values

Several fields have been removed in favor of using podTemplate. Before upgrading, review your configurations and migrate removed fields to their podTemplate equivalents. For the complete list of removed fields and their replacements, see the changelog.