Redpanda Release Notes

This page lists the changes in each Redpanda release from version 26.2.2 onward, organized by version. For a curated summary of the major features in this release line, see What’s New.

v26.2.2 (2026-08-21)

Features

  • rpk sql debug bundle collects a diagnostic bundle from an Oxla (SQL) cluster.

  • rpk generate grafana-dashboard gains a new operations-stretch dashboard: a Grafana dashboard for stretch clusters managed by the Redpanda Operator, covering cross-cluster Raft health, StretchCluster member status, and operator reconcile health. Generate it with rpk generate grafana-dashboard --dashboard operations-stretch.

  • rpk generate grafana-dashboard now offers a load-factor dashboard showing utilization relative to capacity for key broker resources (CPU, I/O scheduler, disk IOPS, memory, network bandwidth, client connections).

  • rpk now supports Shadow Link role sync in Redpanda Cloud clusters.

  • rpk shadow update now accepts a --config-file flag to apply a configuration file directly.

Improvements

  • Cloud Topics compaction now commits work in chunks, resulting in more stable compaction for partitions with a large amount of data.

  • A new schema_registry_replay_on_startup cluster property (default off) hydrates the Schema Registry store at broker start-up rather than lazily on the first request.

  • Some schema_registry and pandaproxy handler interfaces no longer make oversized allocations.

  • The /v1/usage endpoint no longer causes oversized allocations for clusters with a large number of Iceberg-enabled topics.

  • HTTP Proxy: a consumer group now resumes from its committed offset on a fresh consumer instance instead of re-reading from the earliest available offset.

  • The schema_registry recovery path now caches references when canonicalizing schemas.

  • The Cloud Topics and local storage compaction implementations now copy fewer records.

  • Schema Registry now logs whether a 403 on GET /schemas/ids/{id} was caused by a schema ID that does not exist or by missing ACLs. The response returned to clients is unchanged.

  • Schema Registry now replays the internal _schemas topic exactly once when recovering on startup, instead of running redundant concurrent replays; cold start of a large registry is significantly faster.

  • The key-value store now terminates the process on unrecoverable I/O errors in its flush path instead of silently stalling writes.

  • The default Redpanda Console image version in rpk container commands is now v3.9.0.

  • When producing or consuming with Schema Registry, rpk topic produce and rpk topic consume now read the topic’s redpanda.schema.registry.context with a DescribeConfigs request (unless --schema-context is given).

  • rpk topic alter-config now supports a --regex/-r flag to alter the config of all topics matching one or more regular expressions.

  • rpk topic produce and rpk topic consume now resolve Schema Registry schemas in the context bound to the topic via redpanda.schema.registry.context, and add a --schema-context flag to select the context explicitly.

  • rpk cluster health now displays any nodes that may be in maintenance mode.

Bug fixes

  • The leader_balancer_node_mute_timeout property now registers under the correct config name.

  • With schema_registry_enable_authorization enabled, a Schema Registry request that fails before its deferred authorization check no longer aborts the broker; such requests now return an error response.

  • Removing a partition with a very large number of log segments (for example, during partition rebalancing) no longer crashes the broker.

  • A snapshot write that fails on a full disk (ENOSPC) now surfaces the I/O error instead of aborting the node with a misleading "snapshot writer has to be closed" assertion.

  • The internal Kafka client no longer sends a concurrent request on a freshly established SASL connection before authentication finishes, which previously caused the broker to drop the connection.

  • Timequeries on Cloud Topics no longer return an offset up to one indexing interval (4 MiB of records by default) later than the first record at or after the requested timestamp.

  • L0 batches in a Cloud Topic now preserve last_offset_delta in their header; previously an under-declared last offset could stall consumers, skip records, or halt exact-offset replication.

  • Timequeries on a Cloud Topic no longer fail by dropping the client connection or return an unfetchable offset below a partition’s start offset.

  • Topics with min.compaction.lag.ms left unconfigured are no longer considered ineligible for compaction when produced batches hold timestamps in the future.

  • Transient TOPIC_AUTHORIZATION_FAILED errors and SASL authentication failures no longer occur during application of a controller snapshot.

  • Corrupted storage now yields a bad CRC in returned record batches.

  • A Cloud Topic read replica on a cluster no longer prevents L0 objects on that cluster from being garbage collected.

  • The DescribeLogDirs request no longer crashes the broker.

  • Backpressure from the Iceberg coordinator no longer causes high CPU load on the translators.

  • Various s3_fifo users no longer grow unbounded under specific workloads.

  • HTTP Proxy: consumer group fetches no longer fail indefinitely with offset_out_of_range after retention moves a topic’s log start offset past 0; the consumer now recovers to the earliest available offset (auto.offset.reset=earliest).

  • Lifecycle fix on groups.

  • Redpanda no longer incorrectly accepts client-produced control batches.

  • Updating a Shadow Link that uses PLAIN authentication no longer fails when the password is omitted; the stored password is preserved.

  • rpk connect install --connect-version no longer rejects versions with a segment of three or more digits, which had blocked pinning any Redpanda Connect release since 4.100.0. Malformed versions with trailing characters are now rejected during validation rather than failing at download.

  • rpk connect upgrade no longer fails to determine the currently installed Redpanda Connect version when that version has a segment of three or more digits, which had blocked upgrading any Connect install since 4.100.0.

  • rpk security secrets list no longer truncates its output at 100 secrets.

  • rpk shadow create no longer fails secret-reference validation on clusters with more than one page of REDPANDA_CLUSTER-scoped secrets.

  • rpk shadow update in editor mode now replaces the entire Shadow Link configuration instead of merging changed fields, so list-valued fields (for example, topic filters) can shrink or be cleared.

  • The rpk topic describe-storage command now produces valid output for tiered_v2 topics.

  • The Iceberg coordinator’s snapshotting mechanism no longer stalls the reactor when a large number of Parquet files are pending commit.

  • Replication failures in Cloud Topics no longer trigger a rare crash.

  • The Kafka quota manager’s garbage collection no longer triggers a use-after-free during shutdown.

Release notes for older versions

Release notes for versions before 26.2.2 are published on GitHub. See the Redpanda releases page.