Gardener Review Meetings (2026)

In case you couldn't participate and are interested in catching up, you can find the contents of the review meetings we have had in 2026 here.

Meetings are recorded and published on Gardener's YouTube channel.

Check back regularly for updates and upcoming topics!

Reviews

2026/04/15 - v1.140 Release

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenter(s)	Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
@rrhubenov	5m	🗑️ RemoveVali Feature Gate for Vali Instance Removal	#14279
@rfranzke	10m	🌐 NetworkPolicy Controller Optimization	#14410
@ScheererJ	10m	🖥️ [GEP-28] Self-Hosted Shoot API Server Direct Access in Local Setup	#14370
@tobschli	10m	🎮 [GEP-28] Extension Management & gardenlet Controllers	#2906 (issue)

No Demo, But Still Worth Celebrating 🎉

• 🐛 [OPERATOR] Fix a bug where the shoot-care controller cannot reconcile shoots with spec.maintenance.confineSpecUpdateRollout=true and updated DNS credentials, i.e. shoot.spec.dns.providers[].credentialsRef, until the shoot is reconciled. #14397
• 🐛 [USER] Fixed EveryNodeReady shoot condition incorrectly reporting NodeAgentUnhealthy for nodes not managed by MCM. #14509
• ❗️ [OPERATOR] Ingress-GCE no longer requires deployment of BackendConfig CRDs. In addition, the deployment of the default-http-backend in the shoot is no longer necessary and hence removed. gardener-extension-provider-gcp#1320
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] Fixing an issue where a rapid scale up and scale down can result in a cordoned machine in the cluster. machine-controller-manager#1090

---

2026/04/01 - v1.139 Release

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenter(s)	Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
@oliver-goetz	10m	⚖️ Dual Autoscaling for istio-ingressgateway with VPA and HPA	#14313
@timuthy	5m	🔐 Static Username Prefixes for {Admin,Viewer}KubeconfigRequests	#14252
@rfranzke	10m	🌐 Zone-Aware Shoot Control Plane Placement	#14238
@jamand	5m	🌐 Custom Domain Support for gardener-discovery-server	#14126
@DockToFuture	10m	🚪 New Traefik Extension for Shoots	extension-shoot-traefik (repo)

No Demo, But Still Worth Celebrating 🎉

• 🪓 [OPERATOR] Garden .status.encryptedResources field is removed, use Garden .status.credentials.encryptionAtRest.resources instead. #14354
• 🪓 [OPERATOR] The raise-spec-limits verb has been removed for NamespacedCloudProfiles because it is no-longer needed. #14344
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] A bug causing the gardenlet to crash during startup was fixed. Earlier, the startup procedure occasionally failed on large-scale seed clusters due to cache sync timeouts. #14408
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] An issue preventing the shootstate-controller of gardenlet to populate all required states to the ShootState for a self-hosted Shoot is now fixed. #14339

---

2026/03/18 - v1.138 Release

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenter(s)	Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
@rfranzke	10m	🔄 Serial OperatingSystemConfig Reconciliation Coordination in gardener-node-agent	#14129
@cerealsnow	10m	🌍 Local Setup DNS via bind9 — No More /etc/hosts Manipulation	#14062
@oliver-goetz	10m	🏗️ Provider Extensions Setup Migrated to gardener-operator-Based remote Setup	#13994
@nickytd	5m	🏷️ ShootAdvertisedAddress Application Field for UI-Friendly Endpoint Names	#14140
@acumino	5m	🗺️ gardenadm init/join Availability Zone Support via --zone Flag	#14081

No Demo, But Still Worth Celebrating 🎉

• ❗️ [OPERATOR] Hard memory limit on istio-ingress has been removed. Memory is managed by VPA in all cases now. #14197
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] Fixed a race condition in the ControllerInstallation reconciler that could create duplicate installations due to reading from a stale informer cache instead of the API server. #14274
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] The per-worker-pool node-local-dns DaemonSets now also include the name of the worker in their label selector and in their Pods' labels. This resolves an issue where each of the corresponding VPAs targeted all node-cache containers from all of these DaemonSets resulting in incorrect resource recommendations. #14294

---

2026/03/11 - Kubernetes v1.35 Special Edition

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenters: @timuthy, @rfranzke

Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
15m	🎓 Graduation Ceremony Graduated Features	KEP-1287, KEP-5067, KEP-4381, KEP-3015, KEP-4368, KEP-4622, KEP-5504
20m	🌸 Beta Bloom Alpha -> Beta Promotions	KEP-4742, KEP-4192, KEP-4876, KEP-5598, KEP-961, KEP-5295, KEP-127, KEP-4639, KEP-2535, KEP-5307, KEP-3973
10m	🗞️ Fresh Off The Press New Alpha Features	KEP-4671, KEP-5284, KEP-4828, KEP-4827, KEP-5440, KEP-5237, KEP-5471
5m	🧼 Security, Deprecations & Removals	KEP-5495, KEP-4033, KEP-5573, KEP-4781
5m	🪴 What's Changing In Gardener	#13687, #13845, #13707

---

2026/03/04 - v1.137 Release

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenter(s)	Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
@rfranzke	5m	🏠 GEPs Moved to New gardener/enhancements Repository	#14043
@rfranzke	5m	🔑 Secrets Manager: Config Functions and Lazy CA Loading	#14000
@rrhubenov	10m	🪵 VictoriaLogsBackend Feature Gate	#13988
@ScheererJ	5m	🖥️ Node-Specific Configuration Files in gardener-node-agent	#13412
@LucaBernstein	5m	📦 Go Submodule for Gardener APIs	#13536

No Demo, But Still Worth Celebrating 🎉

• 🪓 [DEVELOPER] When using ModeService in the extension webhook library, the specified service port is now properly propagated when constructing the admissionregistrationv1.WebhookClientConfig for {Validating,Mutating}WebhookConfigurations (previously, it was not specified at all and defaulted to 443 by Kubernetes). Make sure to specify --webhook-config-service-port to prevent falling back to the --webhook-config-server-port (if configured). #14063
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] Fixed the shoot-care controller panic for clusters where .status.credentials.rotation exists but .status.credentials.encryptionAtRest is nil. #14147
• 🐛 [OPERATOR] An issue causing the control-plane migration to get stuck if the source backup entry deployment was retried is now fixed. #14091
• 🐛 [USER] An issue which lead to a nil pointer in gardenlet when a Shoot had an empty .spec.addons structure defined is now fixed. #14112

---

2026/02/18 - v1.136 Release

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenter(s)	Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
@oliver-goetz	5m	📝 kube-apiserver Access Logs	#13569
@maxmsap	5m	🧲 provider-ironcore: Experimental GPU Support	ironcore-dev/roadmap#31
@rfranzke	5m	📣 Manifest Propagation To Shoots	#13614
@vitanovs	10m	♻️ InPlaceOrRecreate VPA Update Mode Webhook	#12940, #13573
@DockToFuture	5m	🤝 Seamless Overlay Network Switch	networking-calico#779, aws-custom-route-controller#411
@shafeeqes	5m	🪪 Custom CA Bundle Support For Helm Repositories	#13868
@timuthy	5m	➕ Leftover Toleration During Shoot Cleanup	#13918

No Demo, But Still Worth Celebrating 🎉

• ✨ [USER] Shoot addons (.spec.addons) have been deprecated and will be forbidden starting with Kubernetes 1.35. Their usage was already discouraged for productive clusters, as they now only include unmaintained components (Kubernetes dashboard and Ingress NGINX Controller). #13845
• ✨ [USER] The Shoot field .spec.seedSelector can now be adjusted for already scheduled shoots, as long as the new selector still selects the assigned seed. #13920
• ✨ [OPERATOR] The gardener-controller-manager now increases all ResourceQuotas in project namespaces when a Gardener update leads to Gardener creating more resources in them. This was introduced to prevent failing Shoot reconciliations when ResourceQuotas of projects are near their limit. #13850

---

2026/01/28 - v1.135 Release

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenter(s)	Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
@AleksandarSavchev	5m	🔑 Automatic Credentials Rotation During Shoot Maintenance	#13493
@LucaBernstein	5m	🩹 TokenRequestor: Remediate Outdated ServiceAccount Tokens	#13630
@domdom82	10m	🔄 HA VPN Round-Robin Bonding Mode	#13649
@vpnachev	5m	🪪 WorkloadIdentity Support For DNS	#13720, #13680, #13469
@vicwicker	10m	🩺 Prometheus Health Checks In Care Controllers	#13341
@kon-angelo	5m	🧑‍💼 ManagedResource Support In Generic ControlPlane Actuator	#13585
@marc1404	5m	☸️ Kubernetes Minor Version Retention	#13471

No Demo, But Still Worth Celebrating 🎉

• ✨ [OPERATOR] gardenlet can now propagate static manifests stored in the seed cluster's garden namespace to all shoot namespaces. Read all about it here. #13614
• ✨ [DEVELOPER] The generic control-plane webhook is now capable of ensuring the kube-apiserver and kube-controller-manager Deployments, as well as etcds, of the virtual garden cluster. #13635
• ✨ [DEPENDENCY] CredentialsBindings can now reference core.gardener.cloud/v1beta1.InternalSecret resources. Provider extensions should start validating them similar to references for v1.Secret resources. #13759

---

2026/01/21 - Kubernetes v1.34 Special Edition

📽️ Recording

Demo Agenda 📋

Presenters: @ScheererJ, @tobschli

Duration	Topic	Reference(s)
25m	🎓 Graduation Ceremony Graduated Features	KEP-4381, KEP-3939, KEP-1790, KEP-3751, KEP-5080, KEP-4601, KEP-3331, KEP-4633, KEP-3960, KEP-4818, KEP-2400, KEP-4033
15m	🌸 Beta Bloom Alpha -> Beta Promotions	KEP-4412, KEP-740, KEP-3104, KEP-2837, KEP-3962, KEP-5073, KEP-1287
10m	🗞️ Fresh Off The Press New Alpha Features	KEP-5295, KEP-4317, KEP-5307, KEP-3721
5m	🧼 Security, Deprecations & Removals	KEP-4033, KEP-3015
5m	🪴 What's Changing In Gardener	#12814, #12883