Consolidation of January and February 2026 Kubernetes Patch Releases

[Verónica López]

Dear Kubernetes community,

Following our previous announcements regarding the January patch release delays, we’ve decided to consolidate the January patches with the regular February patch releases. Given the timing, it makes sense to ship a single consolidated set of patches that includes all the fixes and updates from the past few weeks.

In addition to the issues previously reported, we recently encountered further problems with the Go security version updates, such as blockers with conntrack-related tests. The team has triaged and fixed these issues as they arise. We’ll move forward with the February patch releases once everything is verified. The cherry-pick deadline for this cycle remains Friday, February 6 at 5 PM PT.

Note that we’ll also cut one final 1.32 patch release to honour its EOL, originally scheduled for January.

Thank you for your patience and continued support. If you have any questions, you can find us at #Release-management on Slack.

Kind regards,
Verónica López

on behalf of Kubernetes Release Managers