[VOTE] 4.0.2 RC1

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Viktor Somogyi-Vass

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Feb 19, 2026, 11:52:24 AM (3 days ago) Feb 19
to kafka-clients
Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers,

This is the first candidate for release of Apache Kafka 4.0.2.

Since this is a patch version it contains the bug fixes outlined in the
release notes below!

Release notes for the 4.0.2 release:
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.0.2-rc1/RELEASE_NOTES.html

*** Please download, test and vote by Friday 27.

Kafka's KEYS file containing PGP keys we use to sign the release:
https://kafka.apache.org/KEYS

* Release artifacts to be voted upon (source and binary):
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.0.2-rc1/

* Docker release artifacts to be voted upon:
apache/kafka:4.0.2-rc1
apache/kafka-native:4.0.2-rc1

* Maven artifacts to be voted upon:
https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/org/apache/kafka/

* Javadoc:
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.0.2-rc1/javadoc/

* Tag to be voted upon (off 4.0 branch) is the 4.0.2 tag:
https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/4.0.2-rc1

* Documentation:
https://kafka.apache.org/40/documentation.html

* Protocol:
https://kafka.apache.org/40/protocol.html

* Successful CI builds for the 4.0 branch:
Unit/integration tests: https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/22062188033
System tests: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rlVfSLFqZNjcsEJ1ZHwEXChyGqVWHasS?usp=sharing
Out of the 5 failures 3 were flaky (rerun was successful) and 2 are persistent. I checked them back against 4.0.1 and 3.9.1 and they seem to be present throughout the releases, so not new failures:
- tests/kafkatest/tests/core/network_degrade_test.py::NetworkDegradeTest.test_rate@{"task_name":"rate-1000-latency-50","device_name":"eth0","latency_ms":50,"rate_limit_kbit":1000000,"metadata_quorum":"COMBINED_KRAFT"}
- tests/kafkatest/tests/tools/replica_verification_test.py::ReplicaVerificationToolTest.test_replica_lags@{"metadata_quorum":"ISOLATED_KRAFT"}

* Successful Docker Image Github Actions Pipeline for 4.0 branch:
Docker Build Test Pipeline (JVM): https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/22062306029
Docker Build Test Pipeline (Native): https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/22062316512

Thanks,
Viktor

Christo Lolov

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Feb 20, 2026, 10:27:37 AM (2 days ago) Feb 20
to d...@kafka.apache.org, Users, kafka-...@googlegroups.com
Hello!

I did the following to validate the release candidate:

* Did a few random walks through the RELEASE NOTES, Javadocs, Maven
artifacts, and repository
* Checked the signatures of the tgzs with their keys
* Compiled the src.tgz and ran the quickstart against the compiled source
* Ran the quickstart against the binaries.tgz
* Ran the quickstarts against both Docker images
* Ran the system tests with no failures different to the ones you note

My only note is to include a short blog post as a follow-up :)

+1 (non-binding)

Best,
Christo

Viktor Somogyi-Vass

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Feb 20, 2026, 11:35:59 AM (2 days ago) Feb 20
to Christo Lolov, d...@kafka.apache.org, Users, kafka-...@googlegroups.com
Thanks Christo,

In the meantime I created a PR for the missing doc changes: https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/807 
Will create a blog post early next week too.

Best,
Viktor

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