Changes

🚀 Highlights

Async Cluster PubSub

This release introduces full asyncio Cluster PubSub support, bringing shard-channel capabilities (SSUBSCRIBE, SUNSUBSCRIBE, SPUBLISH) to the async RedisCluster client. The new ClusterPubSub class in redis.asyncio.cluster automatically routes shard-channel subscriptions to the correct cluster node based on key-slot hashing, manages per-node PubSub connections, and supports round-robin message retrieval across nodes. Users can create a cluster pubsub instance via RedisCluster.pubsub() and use ssubscribe(), sunsubscribe(), and get_sharded_message() just as they would with the sync cluster client.

Keyspace and subkey notifications

Redis Keyspace Notifications are now supported for standalone and cluster deployments in both sync and async modes. New classes — KeyspaceNotifications, ClusterKeyspaceNotifications, AsyncKeyspaceNotifications, and AsyncClusterKeyspaceNotifications — provide a high-level API for keyspace/keyevent subscriptions and subkey notification families: subkeyspace, subkeyevent, subkeyspaceitem, and subkeyspaceevent. Convenience methods like subscribe_keyspace(), subscribe_keyevent(), subscribe_subkeyspace(), subscribe_subkeyevent(), subscribe_subkeyspaceitem(), and subscribe_subkeyspaceevent() simplify common patterns, with channel classes for both key and subkey channels.

In cluster mode, subscriptions are managed across primary nodes because each node emits notifications only for keys it owns, with built-in topology-change handling. Sync run_in_thread() and async listen() workflows are supported.

Redis Array commands(https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/data-types/arrays/)

redis-py now supports Redis Arrays, a preview Redis data type for sparse, index-addressable sequences of strings. New AR* command helpers cover indexed reads/writes, range scans, deletion, cursor-based insertion, ring-buffer writes, metadata, text search, and aggregation, including ARGET, ARSET, ARMGET, ARMSET, ARSCAN, ARGREP, ARRING, and AROP.

Type Hints Improvements (breaking changes)

The @overload pattern has been applied systematically across core commands (core.py), VectorSet commands, and module commands (Search, JSON, TimeSeries, Bloom filters) to provide distinct return types for sync and async clients. Previously, methods returned a combined ResponseT (i.e., Union[Awaitable[Any], Any]), which caused static analysis tools like mypy and Pyright to flag false positives. Now, sync clients see concrete return types (e.g., int, bool, list[str]) while async clients see Awaitable[...] wrappers. This is a breaking change for type-checking only—runtime behavior is unchanged, but code relying on the old union return types in type annotations may need updates. Two new protocol types, SyncClientProtocol and AsyncClientProtocol, are used in overload signatures to enable this distinction.

RESP3 by default with opt-in unified responses

redis-py 8.0.0 now uses RESP3 on the wire by default while preserving legacy RESP2-compatible Python response shapes for existing applications (#4052). Protocol-independent unified response shapes are available by setting legacy_responses=False, so affected commands return the same Python structure with RESP2 or RESP3.

Use protocol=2 to force RESP2 on the wire, protocol=3 to opt into native RESP3 response shapes, or legacy_responses=False to migrate to unified responses. See docs/unified_responses.rst and specs/unified_responses_migration_guide.md for the affected commands and migration details.

Connection and retry defaults

Default connection settings were updated: socket_timeout and socket_connect_timeout now default to 5 seconds, TCP keepalive is enabled by default, socket reads use a 32 KB buffer, connection pools default to max_connections=100, and retry defaults now use 10 attempts with exponential jitter backoff.

Note: socket_timeout can affect blocking commands such as BLPOP/BRPOP; if a command blocks longer than the client socket timeout, it may raise TimeoutError before the command timeout elapses (#2807).

🧪 Experimental Features

• Added support for new array commands (#4055)

🚀 New Features

• Support Cluster PubSub in asyncio (#3736)
• Add Redis Keyspace Notifications Support for Redis Cluster (#3962)
• Add random load balancing strategy which allows for use of the primary (#4027)
• Add FPHA (floating-point homogeneous array) arg support to JSON.SET (#4011)
• Added custom Claude command + XNACK command support (#4030)
• Adding Time Series Multiple Aggregators support (#4035)
• Adding support for new COUNT aggregator for some sorted set commands - ZINTER, ZINTERSTORE, ZUNION, ZUNIONSTORE (#4034)
• Adding support for new INCREX command (#4067 #4077)
• Add support for PubSub subscriptions with binary channel names and handlers (#4068)

🔥 Breaking changes

• Type hints improvements - fixing static code analysis issues related to combined sync and async return types(vectorsets + commands in core.py) (#3991)
• Type hints improvements - fixing static code analysis issues related to combined sync and async return types - modules (#4005)
• Add Redis Keyspace Notifications Support for Redis Cluster (#3962)
• Added support for subkey notifications (#4040)
• Changing the default protocol used to RESP3, keeping the responses for the default config compatible with the current RESP2 shape. Adding the possibility to opt-in for unified responses for both protocols. (#4025 #4031 #4052 #4046)
• Type Lock.extend and Lock.reacquire as Literal[True] (#4045)
• Handle cluster slot migration in ClusterPubSub (shard subscription reconciliation) (#4044)
• Avoid zero-timeout async reads in hiredis connections readiness checks and replace async's can_read_destructive with non-destructive can_read. (#4063)
• Updates in default connection and retry settings (#4082)

🐛 Bug Fixes

• fix: guard disconnect() against RuntimeError on Python 3.13+ (#3856) (#4013)
• Fix CacheProxyConnection hang when invalidation arrives on another connection (#3600) (#4014)
• fix: handle scientific notation in score_cast_func for RESP2 (#4016)
• Fix TypeError in CacheProxyConnection when cached response is non-bytes (#4017)
• Fix async cluster connection cleanup on topology refresh (#4057)
• Normalize scalar prefixes in IndexDefinition (#3983)
• Avoid zero-timeout async reads in hiredis connections readiness checks and replace async's can_read_destructive with non-destructive can_read. (#4063)
• Preserve explicit None for client metadata config (#4081)

⚠️ Deprecations

• Align deprecation of lib_name/lib_version in async cluster (#3995)
• Add deprecation notice to setex() method documentation (#4051)
• Avoid zero-timeout async reads in hiredis connections readiness checks and replace async's can_read_destructive with non-destructive can_read. (#4063)

🧰 Maintenance

• Adding unstable 8.8 build to pipeline test matrix. Updating the lib version in master. (#4004)
• Fix type hints for register_script to support RedisCluster (#3876)
• Updating dependencies to fix reported vulnerabilities (#4012)
• Bump release-drafter/release-drafter from 6 to 7 (#4019)
• Bump rojopolis/spellcheck-github-actions from 0.58.0 to 0.60.0 (#4018)
• Reorganize unit tests grouping - extracting the tests that define their hardcoded client configuration separately (#4029)
• Update home_json.py - this will make the docs examples interactive (#4020)
• Fix Sync ClusterPubSub.disconnect() — Potential AttributeError (#4036)
• Refactor ClusterPubSub to reuse NodesManager-managed connections. (#4037)
• Fix CROSSSLOT on sharded pubsub resubscription by grouping channels per slot (#4038)
• fix(cluster): enable health check in ClusterNode command execution (#4043)
• Add Python version '3.14t' to CI matrix (#4058)
• docs: fix typos in messages, docstrings, and comments (#4062)
• Updating hash commands type hints and jsonget return type hints (#4054)
• Fix flaky tests (#4071)
• Add CLAUDE.md and /sync-claude-md skill for managing (#4066)
• Randomize cluster startup node order during topology refresh (#4060)

We'd like to thank all the contributors who worked on this release!
@hydroblaze @Br1an67 @mokashang @swoutch @armorbreak001 @Brumbelow @paoloredis @Pack-Yak1 @abersheeran @alisaifee @majiayu000 @uglide @dmaier-redislabs @vladvildanov @petyaslavova