Promoting MCS-API to beta!

[Arthur Outhenin-Chalandre]

Hello everyone,

I am happy to announce that we are considering progressing the
Multi-Cluster Services API (MCS-API) KEP to beta and the associated CRD
to v1beta1 (with no API changes compared to v1alpha1).

MCS-API has matured significantly in recent years. We have now closed
most of the gaps that may have prevented us from reaching beta so far.
This milestone is the result of hard work by many folks in the SIG-MC
community. Also, despite its current alpha status, we have treated the
API as stable for quite some time now and have been careful to avoid
introducing breaking changes, making this graduation to beta long
overdue.

The PRs to handle this promotion have already been created:
- https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/pull/5746
- https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/mcs-api/pull/133

We plan to reach a final decision during the SIG-MC call on January 6,
2026. Please join us there if you would like to express your opinion.
Alternatively, if you cannot make the call, please leave your feedback
via the usual channels (slack, mailing list, the PRs linked above).

For those interested in MCS-API but catching up on the news, here is a
short summary of "recent" improvements and news:
- Creation of a conformance suite which has seen constant improvement
  over the last two years, now testing 27 scenarios (we highly recommend
  checking this out if you are an existing implementer!)
- Closed the gap on missing Service fields
- Added the ability to export annotations and labels
- Formalized many status conditions, including adding conditions to
  ServiceImport
- Added opt-in MCS-API support for the default Kubernetes plugins in
  CoreDNS >= v1.12.2 (available by default in Kubernetes v1.35.0)

Cheers,

-- 
Arthur Outhenin-Chalandre