[URGENT] Upcoming Enhancements Deadline for v1.36

[Ryota]

Hello Kubernetes Community! 👋

Thank you everyone for the attention and cooperation with meeting PRR Freeze requirements! In nearly no time, we are now looking at the upcoming Enhancements Freeze, which is at the end of day Wednesday 11th February 2026 (Anywhere-on-Earth) / Thursday 12th February 2026, 12:00 UTC.

This email is a final reminder for the Enhancements Freeze. Per our earlier PRR Freeze communication [0], all enhancements targeted for v1.36 should already be opted in and tracked on the Enhancements project board [1].

If you have an enhancement opted-in to the release, please check the project board for the latest status:

• Tracked: means that the enhancement has met all criteria
• At Risk: means that the enhancement has NOT yet met all criteria
• Pending Inclusion / no status: means that the enhancements team has not yet reviewed it.

The release enhancements team is actively reviewing all outstanding
enhancements. Please ping your enhancements coordinator for more specific updates.

As a reminder: by enhancements freeze, we require that all enhancements in the release meet the following criteria:

• Have a GitHub Issue in the k/enhancements GitHub repository[2]
• Have a merged KEP in k/enhancements GitHub repository[2] that:
• Is marked as "implementable" for "latest-milestone: 1.36"
• Have all relevant sections of the KEP completed
• Have a test plan
• Have graduation criteria

Enhancements missing this deadline will require an exception[3].

As of writing, we have 95 enhancements on the tracking board (and 1 more to be added):

• 95+1 are "Tracked" for PRR Freeze (and may be at risk for Enhancement Freeze)
• 2 are "Deferred"

Here is the breakdown of KEPs by SIG:

• api-machinery: 10
• apps: 4
• auth: 5
• autoscaling: 3
• instrumentation: 3
• network: 4
• node: 34
• scheduling: 17
• storage: 12
• windows: 2
• cli: 3
• cloud-provider: 1

If your SIG is not listed here, it has not opted in for any enhancements for the v1.36 release.

If you need any clarification, please feel free to reach out in #release-enhancements on the Kubernetes Slack workspace[4].

Cheers,

Ryota Sawada
Kubernetes v1.36 Release Lead, on behalf of the Release Team[5]

[0]: https://groups.google.com/a/kubernetes.io/g/dev/c/eecxV-Nnz0I

[1]: https://rel.k8s.io/v1.36/enhancements

[2]: https://git.k8s.io/enhancements

[3]: https://git.k8s.io/sig-release/releases/EXCEPTIONS.md

[4]: https://kubernetes.slack.com/archives/C02BY55KV7E

[5]: https://git.k8s.io/sig-release/releases/release-1.36/release-team.md