[URGENT] Final call for v1.35 Enhancements

[Drew Hagen]

Ahoy there Kubernetes Community! 👋

We just sailed through our first PRR Freeze! ⛵Thank you everyone for the attention and cooperation that made it a success.

Next, we look forward to Enhancements Freeze, which is later this week at the end of day Thursday 16th October 2025 (AoE) / Friday 17th October 2025, 12:00 UTC. This email is a final reminder for Enhancements Freeze.

Per our earlier PRR Freeze communication [0], all enhancements targeted for v1.35 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: 1.35"
  • 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 the time of writing, we have 100 enhancements on the tracking board:

• 86 are "Tracked" for PRR Freeze (and may be at risk for Enhancement Freeze)
• 14 are "Deferred"

By SIG, these enhancements are (including Deferred):

• api-machinery: 4
• apps: 6
• auth: 7
• autoscaling: 3
• instrumentation: 4
• network: 5
• node: 41
• scheduling: 11
• storage: 7
• cli: 3

If your SIG is not listed here, then it has not opted in for any enhancements for the v1.35 release.

If you need any clarification, please don't hesitate to reach out in
#release-enhancements on the Kubernetes Slack workspace[4].

Yours Truly,

Drew Hagen

Kubernetes v1.35 Release Lead on behalf of the Release Team[5]

[0] Opt-In Enhancements before PRR Freeze
[1]: https://bit.ly/k8s135-enhancements
[2]: https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements
[3]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/EXCEPTIONS.md
[4]: https://kubernetes.slack.com/archives/C02BY55KV7E
[5]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/release-1.35/README.md