Release Notes

For additional information check our sprint demo videos and blogs.

2.31.0

Release: August 21, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

2.30.0

Release: August 03, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

The fix for custom health status configuration could affect existing users. Degraded health status could now be reported as Failure. The behavior is correct, but could be unexepected. If affected, ensure proper setting of the failure threshold in your custom health configuration.

2.29.0

Release: July 13, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

2.28.0

Release: June 22, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

2.27.0

Release: June 01, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

The following fields are no longer used by the Kiali CR and will be ignored if currently set. The standard constant values are now used.

  • spec.istio_labels.egress_gateway_label
  • spec.istio_labels.ingress_gateway_label
  • spec.istio_labels.injection_label_name
  • spec.istio_labels.injection_label_rev

2.26.0

Release: May 29, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

2.25.0

Release: April 20, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

2.24.0

Release: March 30, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

kiali_health_status metric

Starting in v2.22, when the health cache and kiali metrics are both enabled (true by default) Kiali would also write a new metric, kiali_health_status. The initial implementation proved to be too heavy from a cardinality perspective. This metric has been redefined in v2.24 and will now generate a much lower cardinality of time series. Also, it is now opt-in, controlled by spec.server.observability.metrics.health_status.enabled. So, by default in v2.24, this metric will be disabled. The metric name remains the same, although attributes have been altered. Unless manually manipulated, existing series will remain in Prometheus until they naturally expire.

2.23.0

Release: March 09, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

2.22.0

Release: February 16, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

Health Status Pre-Compute and Caching

Kiali v2.22 introduces health status pre-compute and caching which is enabled by default. Production mesh sizes are growing and Kiali render times have been increasing, particularly for the Overview and List pages. In response, Kiali v2.22 changes its approach to health status calculation. In prior versions Kiali calculated health “on-demand”, based on the user’s selected duration, configuration settings, and other information, such as pod status. Starting in v2.22 Kiali will pre-calculate health status using a single, configurable duration, 5 minutes by default. The cached values increase the responsiveness of the Overview and List pages. Other pages, such as the Traffic graph and Detail pages will continue to calculate health status on-demand, and is based on the user’s selected duration. Users may notice that the Duration Dropdown selector has been removed from the Overview and List pages.

Users may notice an increase in backend resource utilization, as the Kiali server will now be calculating and refreshing health status, independent of user sessions. The Kiali CR introduces the following new configuration:

spec.health_config.compute.duration: 5m spec.health_config.compute.refresh_interval: 3m spec.health_config.compute.timeout: 10m

spec.kiali_internal.health_cache.enabled: false

It is recommended to keep the health cache enabled, as not all features will fall back to on-demand calculation.

Any questions, comments or feedback appreciated. Visit #kiali on Istio Slack or start a Discussion in Github at https://github.com/kiali/kiali.

2.21.0

Release: January 26, 2026

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

Traffic Graph Caching

Kiali v2.21 introduces traffic graph caching. Enabled by default. When a user navigates to the Traffic Graph and renders the initial graph, Kiali will start a background job to regenerate the graph periodically, based on the refresh interval set in the UI. The background job will cache the resulting graph and return it on subsequent UI requests. This can greatly improve re-render times, especially for larger graphs. Note that the initial graph render time will be unchanged. It is still recommended to use “Manual” refresh when working with large meshes, in order to fully define the desired graph before performing the initial request. Any fundamental change to the graph definition will invalidate the cache and restart a new refresh job. Users can navigate away and then back to the traffic graph, and resume with the latest cached graph, within the timeout period (10m by default).

Backend resource utilization may be affected, although is not anticipated to change significantly. The caching can be disabled in the Kiali config via:

spec.kiali_internal.graph_cache.enabled: false

Any questions, comments or feedback appreciated. Visit #kiali on Istio Slack or start a Discussion in Github at https://github.com/kiali/kiali.

2.20.0

Release: December 22, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.19.0

Release: November 24, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.18.0

Release: November 03, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.17.0

Release: October 13, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

The following fields are no longer used by the Kiali CR and MUST be removed, if currently set.

  • spec.external_services.istio.registry

2.16.0

Release: September 22, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

Discovery Selectors

Kiali now properly supports Istio control planes deployed into different namespaces. As part of this support both the spec.istio_namespace and spec.external_services.istio.root_namespace configuration fields have been removed. As such, Kiali Discovery Selectors, when defined, must include Istio’s control plane namespace(s). If you are using Kiali Discovery Selectors, please ensure that this new requirement is met. Note that Kiali’s deployment namespace is always included, and so co-located Istio control planes will be discovered.

The following fields are no longer used by the Kiali CR and MUST be removed, if currently set.

  • spec.external_services.istio.root_namespace

2.15.0

Release: September 02, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

Version 2.15.0 introduces a CRD schema for Kiali. The CRD version has not changed. But, validation will now occur on the cluster when the Kiali CRs are created or modified.

2.14.0

Release: August 08, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Change Notes:

The following fields are no longer used by the Kiali CR and MUST be removed, if currently set.

  • no longer used
    • spec.istio_namespace
    • spec.in_cluster
    • spec.deployment.remote_secret_path
  • now auto-discovered
    • spec.external_services.istio.config_map_name
    • spec.external_services.istio.istiod_pod_monitoring_port
    • spec.external_services.istio.envoy_admin_local_port
    • spec.external_services.istio.istio_canary_version
    • spec.external_services.istio.istio_injection_annotation
    • spec.external_services.istio.istio_sidecar_annotation
    • spec.external_services.istio.istiod_deployment_name
    • spec.external_services.istio.istiod_pod_monitoring_port
    • spec.external_services.istio.url_service_version

2.13.0

Release: July 21, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.12.0

Release: Jun 30, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.11.0

Release: Jun 09, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.10.0

Release: May 18, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.9.0

Release: Apr 25, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.8.0

Release: Apr 07, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

Deprecations:

After a 4 month deprecation period the support for Kiali’s original, Cytoscape-based, graph implementation has ended. The ‘spec.kiali_feature_flags.ui_defaults.graph.impl’ configuration setting is no longer supported, and the sole implementation going forward uses PatternFly Topology. This has allowed for a significant cleanup of the Kiali code base, and removal of several dated dependencies. We’d like to thank the Cytoscape project, without which Kiali would not have existed. It is an excellent library, and our migration to PatternFly was motivated by a need to settle on a uniform component library.

2.7.0

Release: Mar 17, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.6.0

Release: Feb 21, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

Upgrade Notes:

The default values for the following Kiali CR fields have changed:

  • spec.istio_labels.app_label_name
    • previous default: “app”
    • new default: unset
  • spec.istio_labels.version_label_name
    • previous default: “version”
    • new default: unset

The change is related to the work done for Kiali issue 7603, included with this release. By default Kiali now allows for a mixing app labeling schemes, using the same set of app and version label pairings recognized by Istio:

  • service.istio.io/canonical-name, service.istio.io/canonical-revision
  • app.kubernetes.io/name, app.kubernetes.io/version
  • app, version

Users can configure a single labeling scheme by setting the existing CR fields, or leaving them set when upgrading.

2.5.0

Release: Feb 03, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.4.0

Release: Jan 13, 2025

Features:

Fixes:

2.3.0

Release: Dec 23, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

2.2.0

Release: Dec 02, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

2.1.0

Release: Nov 11, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

Deprecations:

  • RedHat Community Operator
    • The community operator created confusion as to which operator to use on OpenShift. It will no longer be updated and will eventually be removed. OpenShift users are encouraged to use the productized operator, which is included with licensed copies of OpenShift.

2.0.0

Release: Oct 21, 2024

The first major Kiali release in over 5 years! There are two main reasons for the major version update:

  1. There is a breaking change in Kiali’s namespace management configuration. To limit the namespaces accessible to Kiali, or made visible to users, Kiali v2.0 users will configure Discovery Selectors.

There is no longer support for the following deprecated configuration settings:

  • spec.deployment.accessible_namespaces
  • api.namespaces.exclude
  • api.namespaces.include
  • api.namespaces.label_selector_exclude
  • api.namespaces.label_selector_include
  1. Kiali has a new traffic graph implementation.

The Cytoscape implementation has been deprecated and is no longer the default. Kiali has moved to PatternFly Topology to align with the rest of the Kiali interface, which is already implemented using PatternFly components. The old graph implementation will be removed as soon as the Kiali maintainers believe the new implementation has proven itself in the field. Until that time, it can still be accessed by setting:

spec:
  kiali_feature_flags:
    ui_defaults:
      graph:
        impl: "cy"

Features:

Fixes:

1.89.4

Release: Sep 30, 2024

Features:

The next feature release will be Kiali v 2.0.0

Fixes:

1.89.3

Release: Sep 09, 2024

Features:

The next feature release will be Kiali v 2.0.0

Fixes:

1.89.0

Release: Aug 19, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.88.0

Release: Jul 29, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.87.0

Release: Jul 08, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

Deprecations:

  • Kiali is deprecating its current namespace selection approach. For a description of the new mechanism see https://github.com/kiali/kiali/blob/master/design/KEPS/namespace-discovery/proposal.md. The following configuration is deprecated:
    • spec.deployment.accessible_namespaces
  • Note that the following settings have already been deprecated and will soon be removed:
    • api.namespaces.exclude
    • api.namespaces.include
    • api.namespaces.label_selector_exclude
    • api.namespaces.label_selector_include

1.86.0

Release: Jun 17, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.85.0

Release: May 27

Features:

Fixes:

1.84.0

Release: May 06, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.83.0

Release: Apr 12, 2024

Features:

  • n/a

Fixes:

1.82.0

Release: Mar 22, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.81.0

Release: Mar 01, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.80.0

Release: Feb 09, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.79.0

Release: Jan 19, 2024

Features:

Fixes:

1.78.0

Release: Dec 08, 2023

Features:

Fixes:

Deprecations:

  • Kiali is deprecating use of the Jaeger exporter for Kiali’s own traces. Kiali will move to supporting only the OTel exporter.

1.77.0

Release: Nov 17, 2023

Features:

Fixes:

1.76.0

Release: Oct 27, 2023

Features:

Fixes:

1.75.0

Release: Oct 06, 2023

Features:

Fixes:

1.74.0

Release: Sep 15, 2023

Features:

Fixes:

Last modified August 23, 2026: Release Notes v2.31.0 (#1006) (092ebdf)