Kubernetes v1.36 and More Kubernetes News

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 23, 2026,
updated Apr 25, 2026

• Kubernetes Blog ☛ SELinux Volume Label Changes goes GA (and likely implications in v1.37)

  If you run Kubernetes on GNU/Linux with SELinux in enforcing mode, plan ahead: a future release (anticipated to be v1.37) is expected to turn the SELinuxMount feature gate on by default. This makes volume setup faster for most workloads, but it can break applications that still depend on the older recursive relabeling model in subtle ways (for example, sharing one volume between privileged and unprivileged Pods on the same node). Kubernetes v1.36 is the right release to audit your cluster and fix or opt out of this change.

• Kubernetes Blog ☛ Gateway API v1.5: Moving features to Stable

  The Kubernetes SIG Network community presents the release of Gateway API (v1.5)! Released on March 14, 2026, version 1.5 is our biggest release yet, and concentrates on moving existing Experimental features to Standard (Stable).

  The Gateway API v1.5.1 patch release is already available

  The Gateway API v1.5 brings six widely-requested feature promotions to the Standard channel (Gateway API's GA release channel): [...]

• Kubernetes Blog ☛ Kubernetes v1.36: ハル (Haru)

  Editors: Chad M. Crowell, Kirti Goyal, Sophia Ugochukwu, Swathi Rao, Utkarsh Umre

  Similar to previous releases, the release of Kubernetes v1.36 introduces new stable, beta, and alpha features. The consistent delivery of high-quality releases underscores the strength of our development cycle and the vibrant support from our community.

  This release consists of 70 enhancements. Of those enhancements, 18 have graduated to Stable, 25 are entering Beta, and 25 have graduated to Alpha.

  There are also some deprecations and removals in this release; make sure to read about those.

• Techstrong Group Inc ☛ Kubernetes v1.36 Promotes Stability, Compatibility & Reproducibility

  Kubernetes v1.36 (Spring 2026) introduces 71 enhancements, including major security hardening for the Kubelet API and the debut of Workload-Aware Scheduling (WAS) for AI/ML. This release focuses on fine-grained resource health, stable volume group snapshots, and advanced node-level diagnostics to streamline high-performance distributed workloads.

A couple more a day later:

• Kubernetes Blog ☛ Kubernetes v1.36: User Namespaces in Kubernetes are finally GA

  After several years of development, User Namespaces support in Kubernetes reached General Availability (GA) with the v1.36 release. This is a Linux-only feature.

• Kubernetes Blog ☛ Kubernetes v1.36: Fine-Grained Kubelet API Authorization Graduates to GA

  On behalf of Kubernetes SIG Auth and SIG Node, we are pleased to announce the

  The KubeletFineGrainedAuthz feature gate was introduced as an opt-in alpha feature in Kubernetes v1.32, then graduated to beta (enabled by default) in v1.33. Now, the feature is generally available and the feature gate is locked to enabled. This feature enables more precise, least-privilege access control over the kubelet's HTTPS Hey Hi (AI) replacing the need to grant the overly broad nodes/proxy permission for common monitoring and observability use cases.