What's New: Schema Registry contexts SerDes client support (DOC-2304)

[Feediver1]

Summary

Adds a July 2026 What's New entry for Schema Registry contexts Phase 2 (DOC-2304, epic ENG-1036): contexts enabled by default on BYOC/Dedicated, and SerDes clients targeting a context via a /contexts/{context} URL prefix.

Companion to redpanda-data/docs#1850, which updates the single-sourced contexts and Schema Registry API pages that this entry links to (including the new #serdes-clients anchor, which resolves here once that PR merges and syncs).

⚠️ Timing check before merging: the entry states contexts are "now enabled by default" on BYOC/Dedicated — this is true for clusters on Redpanda 26.2. Please confirm the 26.2 Cloud rollout status with product (Trevor Blackford / Matthew Schumpert) so the entry doesn't land ahead of fleet availability.

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Preview pages

• What's New: Schema Registry contexts enabled by default (updated)
• What's New: SerDes client support for Schema Registry contexts (updated)

Note: docs#1850 has merged, so the entries' #serdes-clients and #upgrade-considerations links resolve on the next preview rebuild against docs main.

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[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Added a July 2026 entry documenting that Schema Registry contexts are enabled by default on BYOC and Dedicated clusters. It describes targeting a context by appending /contexts/{context} to the Schema Registry base URL and explains that schema ID lookups are scoped to that context.

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~2 minutes

Suggested reviewers: jakescahill

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly matches the PR’s main change: adding July 2026 What's New coverage for Schema Registry contexts SerDes support.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description includes a summary, issue link, timing note, and page previews, but it omits the template's Review deadline and checks sections.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch DOC-2304-serdes-contexts-whats-new

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[micheleRP]

Review

Entry is accurate and lands in the right place — the July 2026 section, with no overlap against the earlier Phase 1 "Schema Registry Contexts" entry further down the page. The #serdes-clients anchor it links resolves through the single-source include once docs#1850 merges, so the merge order in the description is right.

Full review of the companion changes is on docs#1850. Two things for this PR:

Before merging

Agreed on the timing gate you flagged, with one addition: the "enabled by default" claim also reaches Cloud through docs#1850 itself, via the ifdef::env-cloud[] NOTE under Enable Schema Registry contexts on the contexts page. So the 26.2 Cloud fleet rollout confirmation gates both PRs, not just this What's New entry.

Suggestion

Long compound sentence, and a heading style that differs from its siblings.

The entry packs two distinct changes — contexts enabled by default, and the SerDes URL prefix — into a single ~60-word sentence. Splitting into two would read better, and would let each change stand on its own in the What's New scan.

The colon-form heading also differs from the other July 2026 entries, which use plain noun phrases ("Egress allowlist for Redpanda Connect pipelines", "New AWS regions for BYOC"). Minor, but worth matching.

[Feediver1]

@micheleRP implemented in 4e81130, going one step further than the literal suggestion: the entry is now two entries, so each change stands on its own in the scan — "Schema Registry contexts enabled by default" (heading styled after the existing "Schema Registry Authorization enabled by default" entry) and "SerDes client support for Schema Registry contexts". The default-flip entry also gained an Upgrade considerations pointer for subjects named :.…, mirroring the release-notes treatment on docs#1850.

One note on the heading rationale: colon headings do appear on the page (product-prefix and : beta patterns), but the original heading matched neither, so the no-colon precedent won.

Both anchors the entries link (#serdes-clients, #upgrade-considerations) arrive via the single-source include — merge order unchanged: docs#1850 first.

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