What's New: Cloud Topics enabled by default (DOC-2309)

[Feediver1]

Summary

Adds the July 2026 What's New entry for DOC-2309: Cloud Topics enabled by default (26.2, Aha S-79).

Why only a What's New entry

The topic page itself is single-sourced from the docs repo, and docs#1786 (DOC-2193, the core twin) already made the 26.2 content cloud-correct: the "Create Cloud Topics" section states no separate cluster property is required, and the pre-26.2 cloud_topics_enabled NOTE is gated ifndef::env-cloud[], so cloud readers never see it. Verified there is no stale enablement text elsewhere in cloud-docs (cloud_topics_enabled was never customer-facing here). The stub at modules/develop/pages/topics/cloud-topics.adoc needs no change.

The entry is inserted below the Terraform entry (not at the top of July) to avoid a merge conflict with #654, which edits the top of the same section.

⚠️ Timing check before merging: the entry claims Cloud Topics need no enablement step — true for clusters on Redpanda 26.2 (self-managed GA'd 2026-07-30). Please confirm the 26.2 Cloud fleet rollout status with product before this lands.

Note: DOC-2309 is assigned to Michele — coordinate before merging.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Preview pages

• What's New in Redpanda Cloud (updated)

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[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The July 2026 “What’s New” section now states that Cloud Topics are enabled by default. It documents creating a Cloud Topic by selecting its storage mode during topic creation and using Cloud Topics exclusively or alongside standard topics on the same cluster.

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

Suggested reviewers: ppanagiotis

🚥 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 is concise and clearly summarizes the main change: Cloud Topics are enabled by default.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description includes a clear summary, rationale, and preview link, but it omits the template's resolves line, review deadline, and checklist.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch DOC-2309-cloud-topics-default

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[dotnwat]

This sounds right to me. @andrwng to confirm

[dotnwat]

Note that this is specifically for cloud clusters. AFAIK it is the same provided the cloud team have done the uptake for the new configuration options?

[andrwng]

Yeah, this looks good to me. In v26.2 we don't even have cloud_topics_enabled, we reuse cloud_storage_enabled instead, which is definitely set in cloud already