kubernetes/minikube v1.38.0

on GitHub

📣😀 Please fill out our fast 5-question survey so that we can learn how & why you use minikube, and what improvements we should make. Thank you! 💃🎉

Release Notes

Version 1.38.0 - 2026-01-28

Higlights

• No Sudo required for vfkit/krunkit on macOS 26+ (requires latest vmnet-helper)
• No Sudo required to run AI Playground on Macos GPUs using minikube
• vfkit: Add Rosetta support for deploying amd64 images on Apple silicon (#22140)

Features

• Add support for Kubernetes v1.35.0 (#21650)(#22015)(#22119)(#22328)
• VM Drivers: add support for NVMe-oF/TCP block devices (#22464)
• VM Drivers: Enable BTF debug symbols to support eBPF tooling in iso (#21800)
• Add option to download preloads from github instead of GCS through --preload-source (#22221)
• Vfkit/Krunkit drivers: add ability to Run vmnet-helper as unprivileged user on macOS 26+ (#22501)
• add option to add helm-based addons (#21847)
• preload: download from github when gcs not available (#21605)

Warnings & Deprecations

• UI: Add a warning on changing default runtime to "containerd" in the next version (v1.39.0) (#22508)
• hyperkit: remove driver builds & warn users to switch (#21946)
• Remove minikube support for 32-bit architectures (#22401)

Improvements

• UI: colorful based on status (profile list, addons list) (#22418)
• Skip caching binaries when --no-kubernetes is set (#21139)
• improve retry logs to print less duplicate lines (#22232)
• improve ssh runner copying cert files (#21923)
• vmnet: Skip validation in download-only mode (#21635)
• Improve windows cert in kubeconfig: normalize generated cert paths to forward slashes (#21845)
• Add cgroup v2 freezer check for API server status (#22249)
• Set FailCgroupV1 kubelet option for kubenetes 1.35+ if cgroup v1 (#22319)
• containerd: retry on transient EOF errors for image load (#22310)
• cri: increase default 2s timeout for crictl commands (#22214)
• crio: verify images are deleted after "image rm" (#22243)
• docker runtime: Use CRI for ListImages function (#22263)
• image save: Add retry logic for local image in case of EOF (#22072)
• HA (multi-control plane): Update kube-vip from v1.0.0 to v1.0.3 (#21699)(#21960)(#22258)

Drivers

• drivers: Introduce WaitForSSHAccess and fix macos smoke tests (#22179)
• hyperkit driver: Fix file descriptor leaks in status (#22524)
• kvm: fix minikube on Fedora/RHEL with SELinux (#21550)
• kvm: remove dependency on external driver (#21625)
• Mark the legacy parallels driver as deprecated (#22379)
• none driver: Fix "stop" with containerd runtime (#22275)
• Update minikube-machine drivers (#22369)
• verify aux drivers installed correctly and exit nicely if not (#21576)
• vfkit: Add Rosetta support for deploying amd64 images on Apple silicon (#22140)
• VM: Enable cgroup v2 by using "systemd cgroup driver" for Kubernetes… (#22320)

Bug fixes

• KIC Drivers: fix docker driver with crio runtime: install dbus (#21724)
• fix: correctly detect nested VMs on macOS and remove timeout multiplier (#22277)
• fix: Increase timeout for containerd image list (#22558)
• fix: kubevirt addon by removing curl dependency (#22557)
• fix: return non-zero exit code when status unavailable (#22494)
• crio: fix ingress by enabling hostNetwork and ClusterFirstWithHostNet (#22239)
• crio: fix preload overwriting user images (#22246)
• Fix Podman mount on macOS by adding host.containers.internal support (#22451)
• Fix the cri-dockerd version upgrade script (#22358)
• fix kubelet config option FailCgroupV1 to failCgroupV1 (#22325)
• addon registry-creds: Fix segfault without config file (#21786)

UI

• Add support for Kurdish language through LANGUAGE=ku (#22512)

• Add support for Ukrainian language through LANGUAGE=uk (#21624)

• Improve french translation (#21559)(#21849)(#22155)(#22386)(#22515)(#22114)

• Improve Chinese translations (#22082)

• UI: improve warning message for proxy (#21980)

• ui: fix correct formatting in tunnel service output (#22400)

• align command paramaters for the ai playground fix (#21583)

CNI

• CNI: Update calico from v3.30.3 to v3.31.3 (#21835)(#21961)(#22259)
• CNI: Update cilium from v1.18.1 to v1.18.6 (#21655)(#21794)(#21953)(#22253)(#22487)
• CNI: Update flannel from v0.27.3 to v0.27.4 (#21700)
• CNI: Update kindnetd from v20250512-df8de77b to v20251212-v0.29.0-alpha-105-g20ccfc88 (#22127)

Addons

• Addon cloud-spanner: Update cloud-spanner-emulator/emulator image from 1.5.41 to 1.5.47 (#21709)(#21832)(#21956)(#22255)(#22489)
• Addon Headlamp: Update Headlamp image from v0.35.0 to v0.36.0 (#21706)(#21958)(#22256)
• Addon ingress: Update ingress-nginx/controller image from v1.13.2 to v1.13.3 (#21701)(#21865)(#22049)
• Addon inspektor-gadget: Update inspektor-gadget image from v0.44.1 to v0.45.0 (#21708)(#22427)(#21843)(#22047)
• Addon kong: Update kong image 3.9.1(#21698)(#21830)(#21952)(#22486)
• Addon kong: Update kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller image from 3.5.1 to 3.5.3 (#21657)(#22000)
• Addon nvidia-device-plugin: Update nvidia/k8s-device-plugin image from v0.17.3 to v0.18.1 (#21652)(#21796)(#22126)
• Addon portainer: Update portainer from 2.15.1 to 2.27.7 (#20956)
• Addon registry: Update registry image from 3.0.0 (#21735)
• Addon Volcano: Update volcano images from v1.12.2 to v1.13.1 (#21656)(#22344)
• Addon yakd: migrate image registry from Docker Hub to GHCR (#22250)
• Addon yakd: Update manusa/yakd image from 0.0.5 to 0.0.7 (#22343)(#22128)
• addon: auto-pause fix github link (#22433)
• addon: bump kube-regsitry-proxy image (#22551)
• addon: fix registry-proxy alpine-slim to use wget (#22550)
• inspektor-gadget addon: remove deleted asset (#21855)

Base image versions

• iso: bump to containerd/nerdctl 2.x (#21409)
• ISO: Update docker-buildx from v0.17.1 to v0.30.1 (#22425)
• iso: Use same Go version (1.25.5) (#22101)
• Kicbase/iso: bump crio to v1.35 (#22332)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update buildkit from v0.18.1 to v0.26.3 (#22186)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update cni-plugins from v1.8.0 to v1.9.0 (#22351)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update containerd from 2.1.4 to 2.2.1 (#22141)(#22353)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update cri-dockerd from v0.4.0 to v0.4.0 (#21797)(#21834)(#21899)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update crictl from v1.28.0 to v1.34.0 (#21924)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update crun from 1.23.1 to 1.26 (#22316)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update docker from 28.4.0 to 28.5.2 (#21757)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update nerdctl from 1.7.7 to 2.2.1 (#22117)(#22376)
• Kicbase/ISO: Update runc from v1.3.0 to v1.4.0 (#22083)
• Kicbase: Bump debian:bookworm from 20250908 to 20251229 (#21837)(#22005)(#22260)(#22402)
• kicbase: Clean up the nerdctld installation (#22438)
• Kicbase: Switch ubuntu jammy to debian bookworm (#21643)
• Kicbase: Update nerdctld from 0.6.1 to 0.7.0 (#21703)

Infra Migration

minikube infra structure is under heavy migration to k8s-infra here are some related PRs:

• preload: download from github when gcs not available (#21605)
• prow add docker-docker-linux-x86-64 integration test in prow (#21807)
• prow: migrate kubernetes bootcamp image to prow (#21904)
• ci: migrate kube-registry-proxy and gvisor to registry.k8s.io (#22544)
• ci: move gvisor addon to registry.k8s.io (#22484)
• ci: add configs needed to push gvisor image to k8s-infra using prow (#22406)
• ci: Add kube-registry-proxy image to k8s.io infra (#22448)
• add building kicbase in prow in registry.k8s.io (#22518)
• ci: rename prowjobs to be shorter and easier to read (#22218)
• ci: rename prow tests (#22223)
• CI: delete prow images not needed anymore (#21756)
• ci: prow fix errors in cloudbuild.yaml (#22007)
• prow: migrate kubernetes bootcamp image to prow (#21904)
• prow: run macos functional tests in prow (#22034)
• prow: images build for all other archs (linux/ppc64le,linux/s390x) (#22471)
• ci: update prow gvisor image jobs (#22411)
• prow: add docker-docker-linux-x86-64 integration test in prow (#21807)
• CI: add kvm-docker-linux-x86-64 integration test in prow (#21556)
• ci: add kvm containerd to prow test (#22006)
• ci: add kvm crio to prow (#22009)
• ci: add docker crio prow (#22011)
• ci: add docker docker test with arm64 arch to prow (#22039)
• ci: Added docker-containerd-linux-x86-64 tests to prow (#21974)
• ci: add None Contained X86 tests to Prow (#22235)
  ci: remove preload scripts from minikube repo and point to external (#22079)
• build deps: Move hyperv and virtualbox drivers to minikube (#21966)
• rename flag to to --perload-source (#22236)
• copy the external vmware driver to internal (#21969)
• add building kicbase in prow in registry.k8s.io (#22518)
• Internalize github.com/docker/machine/libmachine (#21647)
• Upgrade buildroot image to ubuntu:22.04 (#22187)
• Always build the auto-pause binary on the host (#22354)
• cleanup: Replace go-difflib with go-cmp in bsutil tests and add missing coverage (#22456)
• Codespace: add golang and kvm device (#22217)
• config: Use slices.Contains (#21681)
• preload: download from github when gcs not available (#21605)
• preload: verify storage type after container runtime is enabled (#22042)
• prow: images build for all other archs (linux/ppc64le,linux/s390x) (#22471)
• prow: run macos functional tests in prow (#22034)
• Refactor Invoking Kubeadm command to prepare for debian 12 (#21642)
• Release: Update kicbase to v0.0.49 (#22572)
• Remove old obsolete Podman kubic repository (#21773)
• Remove the cnitool package from iso (#22349)
• remove unmaintained storage-provisioner-gluster addon (#20370)
• RPM package: Add vendor info (#21759)
• set sysctl params for inotify, to avoid 'too many open files' errors (#21599)
• Test(shell): accept bash/sh/wsl as valid grandparent on Windows (#22525)
• tests: Bump timeout tests TestISOImage/PersistentMounts//data (#22289)
• ci: remove free gha macos functioanl tests (#22109)
• ci: remove preload scripts from minikube repo and point to external (#22079)
• ci: rename prow tests (#22223)

For a more detailed changelog, including changes occurring in pre-release versions, see CHANGELOG.md.

Thank you to our contributors for this release!

• 上学上够了
• Aaron Dewes
• Abhigyan Shekhar
• Adil Ansari
• Aguacero 🌧️
• Alban Crequy
• Anders F Björklund
• Andrii Holovin
• Bob Sira
• Byounguk Lee
• caesarsage
• coderrick
• ComradeProgrammer
• Copilot
• Daniel
• developowl
• divanshu-go
• Divy Singhvi
• Henry Chen
• Jeff MAURY
• Marc Nuri
• Mario Kahlhofer
• Mateusz Łoskot
• Medya Ghazizadeh
• Michael Adam
• minikube-bot
• Nepomuk Crhonek
• Niels de Vos
• Nir Soffer
• Predrag Rogic
• Raj Bhargav
• Riaan Nolan
• Riker
• self-sasi
• Søren Howe Gersager
• Sumesh P
• thc1006
• VerlorenerReisender
• Vlado Djerek
• XiaWuSharve
• zhengtianbao

Thank you to our PR reviewers for this release!

• medyagh (152 comments)
• nirs (128 comments)
• Copilot (121 comments)
• afbjorklund (10 comments)
• cfergeau (4 comments)
• divysinghvi (4 comments)
• obnoxxx (3 comments)
• prezha (3 comments)
• mloskot (2 comments)
• bobsira (1 comments)
• ComradeProgrammer (1 comments)
• divanshu-go (1 comments)
• OdedViner (1 comments)

Thank you to our triage members for this release!

Installation

See Getting Started

Binary Checksums

darwin-amd64: e7eceb12047064c9e93eb37ad8ef93110527f39bd0eb01adb71cea77aec94089
darwin-arm64: 51066c42a555f0e455da362901fcf0613f43b7dc58496ffe2a495230cf3f9e41
linux-amd64: 6f3fa62bbc3820dbe1f1cffe4beef62c466a8fb1058837781d20d36233dcfa12
linux-arm64: e40a00cd9d6ee5d529e3bbff0638d49df644cb3cc4b41841ca3fe7fc2970f392
linux-ppc64le: 4786136c2c6cc5c58c839018e77a42a2bdcd1c759b54332a2383e090b5f5c88e
linux-s390x: eef44e180f18bfe3b0c008420350a71b1b4781a69d38c2a9d6ab6c0e5efe06de
windows-amd64.exe: 52bd096dec2eb407735b14302fbce59891ada55c8451935939f31303ef1bb394

ISO Checksums

amd64: a4fb7be0e2dba309dae922ae5bd23d958d68adf0d0b02a23e18601834272f026
arm64: 1207d92aa462220ecf7dd10af162c2a38b1db601a59bcbf271676beac5fee84c