Kubernetes 1.37 Release Highlights Discussion

[SwathiR03]

This is a discussion to collect the Release Highlights for the 1.37 release cycle.

Release Highlights are an essential part of the Kubernetes release cycle as they provide a birds-eye view of improvements, breaking or user-facing changes that are coming as part of the upcoming release. The release Comms team is asking for SIGs to comment on this discussion with items that we should highlight in release communications for v1.37.

For each submission, please include a link to the KEP, the stage the feature is moving to, and a brief description of the KEP that will be used as an outline for the blog post content.

The deadline for v1.37 Release Highlights is 28th July, 2026(Tuesday).

Here is the discussion thread from the last release cycle.

cc @kubernetes/release-team-leads
cc @RinkiyaKeDad @TineoC @kirti763 @SophiaUgo @troy0820 @dipesh-rawat @aibarbetta @Prajyot-Parab

Ref: #3027
xref to contacts issue: #3052

[TineoC]

Breaking Changes, Deprecations, and Removals for v1.37

SIG API Machinery

KEP	Change	Type
KEP-6178	ConcurrentWatchObjectDecode graduates to Beta, enabled by default	Behavioral Change

SIG Network

KEP	Change	Type
KEP-5495	kube-proxy IPVS mode deprecation warning added by kubeadm	Deprecation
KEP-5495	kube-proxy mode migration prep - empty mode field defaults to iptables, warning emitted if unset	Deprecation

SIG Apps

KEP	Change	Type
KEP-5295	KYAML feature gate locked to enabled (GA)	Locked

API Removals (expired API versions - no individual KEPs)

• v1alpha1 ClusterTrustBundles (certificates API)
• v1beta1 IPAddress (networking API)
• v1beta1 ServiceCIDR (networking API)
• v1beta1 VolumeAttributesClasses (storage API)

Additional deprecations (no KEP)

• kubectl run --filename/-f flag deprecated (already silently ignored)

cgroup v1 - heads up

cgroup v1 has been soft-disabled since v1.35 (failCgroupV1=true by default). The code is still present but no longer tested. Nothing changes in v1.37 for cgroup v1 - it remains in the same state. However, removal is expected in a future release. For more details, see KEP-5573.

[neolit123]

SIG Cluster Lifecycle

• kubeadm: the deprecated configuration API v1beta3 was removed and the work on v1 has started:
  • kubeadm: remove the v1beta3 API and PublicKeysECDSA feature gate kubernetes#136016

[SwathiR03]

SIG Autoscaling:

HPA scale to zero being promoted to Beta - kubernetes/kubernetes#139648

Link: https://kubernetes.slack.com/archives/C09R1LV8S/p1782218285551079

[troy0820]

Sig-Windows:

Nothing to highlight

Link: https://kubernetes.slack.com/archives/C0SJ4AFB7/p1783531799250149?thread_ts=1783517360.474399&cid=C0SJ4AFB7

[TineoC]

These are the ones that stood out to me:

Alpha

1. Pod-Level Checkpoint/Restore http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/5823
2. PV Health Monitor http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/1432

Beta

1. Kubelet-in-UserNS http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/2033
2. HPA scale to/from zero http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/2[021](http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/2033)

Stable

1. KYAML http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/5295
2. Pod Level Resources http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/2837 http://kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/552
3. Support for env files https://www.kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/3721
4. metrics.k8s.io is stable https://www.kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/5207/
5. Configurable Tolerance for HPA https://www.kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/4951
6. Arbitrary FQDN as Pod Hostname https://www.kubernetes.dev/resources/keps/4762