strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator 0.45.2

on GitHub

⚠️ Important: Strimzi 0.45 supports only Kubernetes 1.25 and newer. Kubernetes 1.23 and 1.24 are not supported anymore.

⚠️ Important: Strimzi 0.45.2 is the last patch release from the 0.45.x release branch, there will be no other patch release after this one.

⚠️ Important: For upgrades to Strimzi 0.46 and above, pay attention to the Upgrade to Strimzi 0.46-0.51 section of this release page.

Main changes since 0.45.1

This release contains the following new features and improvements:

• Dependency updates and CVE fixes
• Add support for Kafka 3.9.2

All changes can be found under the 0.45.2 milestone.

Watch out also for some notable changes, deprecations, and removals:

• Strimzi 0.45 is the last minor Strimzi version with support for ZooKeeper-based Apache Kafka clusters and MirrorMaker 1 deployments.
  Please make sure to migrate to KRaft and MirrorMaker 2 before upgrading to Strimzi 0.46 or newer.
• Strimzi 0.45 is the last Strimzi version to include the Strimzi EnvVar Configuration Provider (deprecated in Strimzi 0.38.0) and Strimzi MirrorMaker 2 Extensions (deprecated in Strimzi 0.28.0).
  Please use the Apache Kafka EnvVarConfigProvider and Identity Replication Policy instead.

Upgrade to Strimzi 0.46-0.51

Upgrade to Strimzi 0.46-0.51 is possible, however, if you are currently using Kafka 3.9.2, the operator will fail after the upgrade with an error similar to this:

2026-03-07 17:16:15 WARN  AbstractOperator:567 - Reconciliation #15(watch) Kafka(myproject/my-cluster): Failed to reconcile
io.strimzi.operator.cluster.model.KafkaUpgradeException: Unsupported Kafka.spec.kafka.version: 3.9.2. Supported versions are: [4.1.1, 4.2.0, 4.0.0, 4.0.1, 4.1.0, 3.0.0, 3.2.3, 3.3.2, 3.4.1, 3.5.0, 3.5.1, 3.6.0, 3.5.2, 3.6.1, 3.7.0, 3.6.2, 3.7.1, 3.8.0, 3.0.1, 3.1.0, 3.1.1, 3.2.0, 3.1.2, 3.2.1, 3.3.1, 3.4.0, 2.1.0, 3.8.1, 3.9.0, 3.9.1, 2.6.2, 2.7.1, 2.8.0, 2.8.1, 2.5.1, 2.6.0, 2.6.1, 2.7.0, 2.3.1, 2.4.0, 2.4.1, 2.5.0, 2.1.1, 2.2.0, 2.2.1, 2.3.0]
        at io.strimzi.operator.cluster.model.KafkaVersion$Lookup.version(KafkaVersion.java:148)
        at io.strimzi.operator.cluster.operator.assembly.KRaftVersionChangeCreator.detectToAndFromVersions(KRaftVersionChangeCreator.java:157)
        at io.vertx.core.impl.future.Composition.complete(Composition.java:40)
        at io.vertx.core.impl.future.FutureBase.lambda$emitResult$0(FutureBase.java:59)
        at io.netty.util.concurrent.AbstractEventExecutor.runTask(AbstractEventExecutor.java:148)
        at io.netty.util.concurrent.AbstractEventExecutor.safeExecute(AbstractEventExecutor.java:141)
        at io.netty.util.concurrent.SingleThreadEventExecutor.runAllTasks(SingleThreadEventExecutor.java:535)
        at io.netty.channel.SingleThreadIoEventLoop.run(SingleThreadIoEventLoop.java:201)
        at io.netty.util.concurrent.SingleThreadEventExecutor$5.run(SingleThreadEventExecutor.java:1195)
        at io.netty.util.internal.ThreadExecutorMap$2.run(ThreadExecutorMap.java:74)
        at io.netty.util.concurrent.FastThreadLocalRunnable.run(FastThreadLocalRunnable.java:30)
        at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1583)

When that happens, use the following command to update the Kafka version annotation on the Kafka Pods:

kubectl annotate pod -l strimzi.io/kind=Kafka,strimzi.io/component-type=kafka,strimzi.io/cluster=CLUSTER_NAME strimzi.io/kafka-version=3.9.1 --overwrite -n NAMESPACE_NAME

Where CLUSTER_NAME is the name of your cluster and NAMESPACE_NAME is its namespace.

Once you change the annotation, the upgrade will proceed.

Upgrading from Strimzi 0.45.1

See the documentation for upgrade instructions.

Upgrading from Strimzi 0.22 or earlier

Direct upgrade from Strimzi 0.22 or earlier is not supported anymore! You have to upgrade first to one of the previous versions of Strimzi. You will also need to convert the CRD resources. For more details, see the documentation.

Container images

The following container images are part of this release:

New Contributors

• @shub-est made their first contribution in #12237

What's Changed

• [release-0.45.x][ST] Fix setup Minio and freeze Minio version by @im-konge in #11587
• [AZP] Add cleanup phase to UTs/ITs job for build - release-0.45.x branch by @im-konge in #11896
• Fix kuberntes-client exclusion by @fvaleri in #11892
• [release-0.45.x] Fix Postgres issue in STs and clean the cache by @im-konge in #12045
• Bumped Vert.x and Netty to fix CVEs on 0.45.x branch by @ppatierno in #12060
• Bumped Vertx 4.5.22 and Netty 4.1.128.Final on 0.45.x branch by @ppatierno in #12064
• Upgrade Zookeeper to remediate CVE-2024-47554 by @shub-est in #12237
• Upgraded Nimbus Jose JWT to 10.0.2 to remediate CVE-2025-53864 by @shub-est in #12247
• Upgraded GRPC Netty Shaded to remediate CVE-2025-55163 by @shub-est in #12251
• Upgraded Cruise Control to 2.5.146 by @shub-est in #12255
• Updated Netty to 4.1.130.Final to resolve CVE-2025-67735 by @shub-est in #12286
• Updated Apache Log4J to 2.25.3 to remediate CVE-2025-68161 by @shub-est in #12288
• Update Vertx to 4.5.24 to remediate CVE-2026-1002 by @shub-est in #12367
• Add support for Kafka 3.9.2 by @im-konge in #12321
• Update Kafka Exporter to 1.9.0 - release-0.45.x by @im-konge in #12449
• [release-0.45.x] Update CHANGELOG with information about CVE fixes and other information by @im-konge in #12460
• Update Jackson to address CVE GHSA-72hv-8253-57qq by @MichaelMorrisEst in #12485