rancher/rke2 v1.36.5+rke2r1 on GitHub

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-core tarball now contains Traefik images instead of ingress-nginx. The standalone rke2-images-traefik tarball has been removed. Users who must continue using ingress-nginx will now need to manually provide the rke2-images-ingress-nginx tarball.
Future Removal: The ingress-nginx chart 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 v1.36.5.

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/token

Changes since v1.36.4+rke2r1:

Update multus to version v4.3.0.10 (#11152)
Bump Traefik chart version to get latest gateway-api crds (#11143)
- Consume gateway-api v1.6.1
Bump Traefik 3.7.13 (#11180)
Bump Traefik to v3.7.13 (grpc CVE fix) (#11200)
Cnis update for 2026-09 release (#11207)
Rke2-snapshot-controller: bump image to v8.6.0-build20260909 (#11222)
Update hardened core, coredns, vsphere, metric images (#11233)
Bump k3s and etcd (#11241)
Bump klipper-helm to v0.13.3-build20260909 (#11250)
Bump rke2-cloud-provider version for 2026-09 release cycle (#11259)
Update ingress-nginx to chart 4.15.110 / image v1.15.1-prime12 (#11254)
Update Cilium chart to 1.20.200 (#11267)
Update multus chart to v4.3.102 (#11289)
Update to v1.36.5-rke2r1 and Go 1.26.8 (#11299)
Charts: Bump Harvester CSI Driver to 0.1.32 (#11279)
- Bump Harvester CSI Driver to v0.2.10 and add optional controller pod security context support; default behavior is unchanged.
Update CoreDNS chart to 1.47.101 (#11293)
Update CoreDNS chart to 1.47.102 (#11304)
Bump k3s 2026-Sept (#11317)

Charts Versions

Component	Version
rke2-cilium	1.20.200
rke2-canal	v3.32.2-build2026090900
rke2-calico	v3.32.200
rke2-calico-crd	v3.32.200
rke2-coredns	1.47.102
rke2-ingress-nginx	4.15.110
rke2-metrics-server	3.14.001
rke2-multus	v4.3.102
rancher-vsphere-csi	3.7.3-rancher300
rancher-vsphere-cpi	1.16.200
harvester-cloud-provider	0.2.1500
harvester-csi-driver	0.1.3200
rke2-snapshot-controller	5.2.004
rke2-snapshot-controller-crd	5.2.004
rke2-traefik	40.1.013
rke2-traefik-crd	40.1.013

Packaged Component Versions

Component	Version
Kubernetes	v1.36.5
Etcd	v3.6.14-k3s3
Containerd	v2.3.4-k3s1
Runc	v1.4.3
Metrics-server	v0.9.0
CoreDNS	v1.14.7
Ingress-Nginx	v1.14.5-hardened2
Helm-controller	v0.17.9
Traefik	v3.7.13

Available CNIs

Component	Version	FIPS Compliant
Canal (Default)	Flannel v0.28.9 Calico v3.32.2	Yes
Calico	v3.32.2	No
Cilium	v1.20.2	No
Multus	v4.3.1	No

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