Kubernetes v1.33: mid-cycle update and important deadlines [Week 8] ✨🔮

[nina polshakova]

Hello Kubernetes community,

TL;DR: 78 enhancements post-Enhancements Freeze. Please be aware of the docs and blogs deadlines below.

We’ve crossed the halfway mark for Kubernetes 1.33! The journey so far has been smooth, and as we venture into the second half of the release cycle, here’s what’s ahead on our roadmap.

It’s been a few weeks since the Enhancements Freeze, and we are 7 weeks away from the 1.33 release.

Upcoming important dates (1.33 release schedule):

1. Code Freeze and Test Freeze - 02:00 UTC Friday, 21st March 2025 / 19:00 PDT Thursday, 20th March 2025: Week 10 

2. Docs Freeze — 02:00 UTC Wednesday, 9th April 2025 / 19:00 PDT Tuesday, 8th April 2025: Week 13

3. Feature Blog Freeze — 02:00 UTC Friday, 11th April 2025 / 19:00 PDT Thursday, 10th April 2025: Week 13

 

Enhancements

We are now tracking 78 enhancements post-Enhancements Freeze, with 5 exceptions filed and all exception requests approved. You can see all enhancements we are currently tracking on the Github project board.

 

Feature Blogs

Feature blogs are a great way to spotlight your enhancement and showcase its impact on the community. This is especially encouraged for high-visibility changes as well as deprecations and removals. The deadline to opt in was this week, on Wednesday, March 5th, 2025. You can view the current opted-in features on the Comms team’s Github board. If you have opted in, please make sure your blog is ready for review by the Feature Blog Freeze deadline (April 10th).

If you have any questions, please reach out to the comms team in the #release-comms Slack channel!

 

Documentations

Unless the KEP changes do not require any updates to the website, please open a PR against the `dev-1.33` branch on `kubernetes/website. ' Instructions to create a placeholder PR are here. All enhancements that are determined to require documentation must have their docs PRs in a `ready-to-merge` state by the Docs Freeze deadline (April 8th).

Release highlights

For each release, we choose high-impact features to highlight an important part of the release that provides a bird's eye view of improvements, breaking or user-facing changes that are coming as part of the upcoming release. We kindly ask that all SIG Leads and Technical Chairs join in the GitHub discussion before the deadline.

 

Overall, the 1.33 release has been progressing smoothly, and alpha-3 was released this week, on Tuesday, March 4th. Lastly, we thank the SIG leads, KEP authors, PRR reviewers, and other contributors for their continuous commitment!

For any questions or feedback, please reach out to us on #sig-release.

Best,

Nina Polshakova, on behalf of the 1.33 Release Team.