4.2.0 ?
expected H2 2026
Forecast
Drawn from active KIPs and public community discussion. Not a commitment - scope can shift, slip, or be cut between now and the actual release.
- KIP-1150 Diskless Kafka (preview) - brokers using object storage (S3/GCS/ADLS) as primary storage
- Share groups post-GA hardening: better metrics, stronger delivery semantics
- New consumer group protocol (KIP-848) becomes the default for new groups
- Transactional protocol V2 stabilisation; tighter exactly-once guarantees
- Tiered storage: broader filesystem plugin support, faster catch-up
- KRaft observability and dynamic quorum reconfiguration improvements
- Streams: incremental upgrades to the foreign-key join engine
- Connect: improved exactly-once for sink connectors