Warning
Upstream ingress-nginx Retirement & Transition to Traefik
Because ingress-nginx was retired upstream as of March 2026, Traefik is now the default for new clusters starting in v1.36 (existing clusters will keep their current ingress upon upgrade to avoid breakage). This transition brings the following structural changes:
- Airgapped Environments: The
rke2-images-coretarball now contains Traefik images instead ofingress-nginx. The standalonerke2-images-traefiktarball has been removed. Users who must continue usingingress-nginxwill now need to manually provide therke2-images-ingress-nginxtarball. - Future Removal: The
ingress-nginxchart will not receive any additional updates and will be completely removed in v1.37 for community users. - Prime Customers: Please refer to the official product documentation for specific Prime considerations.
This release upgrades Traefik chart to v40.x which includes a breaking change for the ingress-nginx migration: the provider name changes from kubernetesIngressNginx to kubernetesIngressNGINX. Check https://github.com/traefik/traefik-helm-chart/releases/tag/v40.0.0 for more details
This release updates Kubernetes to v1.36.3.
Important Note
If your server (control-plane) nodes were not started with the --token CLI flag or config file key, a randomized token was generated during initial cluster startup. This key is used both for joining new nodes to the cluster, and for encrypting cluster bootstrap data within the datastore. Ensure that you retain a copy of this token, as is required when restoring from backup.
You may retrieve the token value from any server already joined to the cluster:
cat /var/lib/rancher/rke2/server/tokenChanges since v1.36.2+rke2r1:
- Bump HCP 0.2.12 (#10644)
- Charts: Bump Harvester CSI driver 0.1.30 (#10670)
- Update ingress-nginx to chart 4.15.102 / image v1.15.1-prime5 (#10697)
- Bump hardened runtime images for Go/x-net CVE fixes (#10725)
- Backport chart updates to release-1.36: canal, calico, cilium, multus… (#10741)
- Bump HCP to 0.2.14 (#10702)
- Bump klipper-helm to v0.12.1-build20260709 (#10751)
- Bump snapshot-controller image tag to v8.6.0-build20260708 (#10755)
- Update to coredns chart 1.46.004 and metrics-server chart 3.13.102 (#10762)
- Update ingress-nginx to chart 4.15.103 / image v1.15.1-prime6 (#10766)
- Bump Traefik to v3.7.7 (#10771)
- Update Multus chart to v4.3.004 (#10781)
- Bump CCM - 2026 July (#10795)
- Bump etcd to 3.6.12-k3s1-build20260708 (#10787)
- Add PRIME versions of the vsphere images (#10794)
- Bump k3s for 2026-07 (#10800)
- Bump ingress-nginx version to prime7 (#10816)
- Update Canal chart to v3.32.1-build2026070901 (#10824)
- Update to coredns chart 1.46.1 and metrics-server chart 3.13.1 (#10837)
- Update CNIs for 2026-07 Release Cycle (#10852)
- Bump Traefik to v3.7.8 (#10857)
- Bump k3s again for 2026-07 (#10842)
- Chore: Update rke2-ingress-nginx version in charts/chart_versions.yaml (#10872)
- Bump helm-controller and klipper-helm for --force-conflicts support (#10891)
- Don't clean up data dirs still referenced by containers (#10895)
- Update CNIs for 2026-07 Release Cycle (#10901)
- Update to v1.36.3-rke2r1 and Go 1.26.5 (#10918)
- Bump hardened images to build20260722 for grpc CVE (GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf) (#10908)
- Update vsphere-csi chart (#10912) (#10931)
- Fix package-windows-images platform matching (#10941)
- Validate-charts: validate vsphere prime (hardened) images (#10922)
- Bump hardened-crictl to v1.36.0-build20260727 (#10953)
- Bump helm-controller and klipper-helm (#10958)
- Bump containerd to v2.3.3-k3s1 (#10963)
- Bump ingress-nginx chart and version (#10967)
- Bump vSphere CSI chart to 3.7.2-rancher500 and hardened-csi-provisioner to v4.0.1-build20260730 (#10976)
- Update rancher-vsphere-csi to 3.7.2-rancher600 and align hardened CSI images (#10984)
Charts Versions
| Component | Version |
|---|---|
| rke2-cilium | 1.19.601 |
| rke2-canal | v3.32.1-build2026072200 |
| rke2-calico | v3.32.100 |
| rke2-calico-crd | v3.32.100 |
| rke2-coredns | 1.46.201 |
| rke2-ingress-nginx | 4.15.107 |
| rke2-metrics-server | 3.13.105 |
| rke2-multus | v4.3.008 |
| rancher-vsphere-csi | 3.7.2-rancher700 |
| rancher-vsphere-cpi | 1.15.300 |
| harvester-cloud-provider | 0.2.1400 |
| harvester-csi-driver | 0.1.3000 |
| rke2-snapshot-controller | 4.2.008 |
| rke2-snapshot-controller-crd | 4.2.008 |
| rke2-traefik | 40.1.009 |
| rke2-traefik-crd | 40.1.009 |
Packaged Component Versions
| Component | Version |
|---|---|
| Kubernetes | v1.36.3 |
| Etcd | v3.6.14-k3s1 |
| Containerd | v2.3.3-k3s1 |
| Runc | v1.4.3 |
| Metrics-server | v0.9.0 |
| CoreDNS | v1.14.6 |
| Ingress-Nginx | v1.14.5-hardened2 |
| Helm-controller | v0.17.7 |
| Traefik | v3.7.8 |
Available CNIs
| Component | Version | FIPS Compliant |
|---|---|---|
| Canal (Default) | Flannel v0.28.8 Calico v3.32.1 | Yes |
| Calico | v3.32.1 | No |
| Cilium | v1.19.6 | No |
| Multus | v4.3.0 | No |
Helpful Links
As always, we welcome and appreciate feedback from our community of users. Please feel free to:
- Open issues here
- Join our Slack channel
- Check out our documentation for guidance on how to get started.