operator: v26.1.3

Fixed

• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Removed more historic field managers that have caused problems with changes to StatefulSets.
• Fixed a hot reconcile loop on healthy Redpanda clusters where the operator would re-enqueue itself every ~2 seconds instead of settling into the 3-minute periodic requeue interval. The setStatusCondition helper treated a zero rate limit as "force an update" (because time.Since(anything) > 0 is always true), which bumped lastTransitionTime on every pass and triggered a status write for conditions that had not actually changed. Rate-limited heartbeats for License and Configuration conditions are preserved.
• Fixed an issue where the operator failed to authenticate to the Redpanda cluster with SCRAM when bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef pointed at an externally-managed secret.

operator: v25.3.4

Fixed

• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Removed more historic field managers that have caused problems with changes to StatefulSets.
• Fixed a hot reconcile loop on healthy Redpanda clusters where the operator would re-enqueue itself every ~2 seconds instead of settling into the 3-minute periodic requeue interval. The setStatusCondition helper treated a zero rate limit as "force an update" (because time.Since(anything) > 0 is always true), which bumped lastTransitionTime on every pass and triggered a status write for conditions that had not actually changed. Rate-limited heartbeats for License and Configuration conditions are preserved.
• Fixed an issue where the operator failed to authenticate to the Redpanda cluster with SCRAM when bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef pointed at an externally-managed secret.
• Fixed an issue where in-use features from an enterprise cluster did not have deterministic sort order and could cause reconciliation storms due to status changes.

operator: v25.2.4

Fixed

• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Removed more historic field managers that have caused problems with changes to StatefulSets.
• Fixed a hot reconcile loop on healthy Redpanda clusters where the operator would re-enqueue itself every ~2 seconds instead of settling into the 3-minute periodic requeue interval. The setStatusCondition helper treated a zero rate limit as "force an update" (because time.Since(anything) > 0 is always true), which bumped lastTransitionTime on every pass and triggered a status write for conditions that had not actually changed. Rate-limited heartbeats for License and Configuration conditions are preserved.
• Fixed an issue where the operator failed to authenticate to the Redpanda cluster with SCRAM when bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef pointed at an externally-managed secret.
• Fixed an issue where in-use features from an enterprise cluster did not have deterministic sort order and could cause reconciliation storms due to status changes.

charts/redpanda: v26.1.3

Fixed

• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Fixed an issue where the bootstrap user password was not loaded from an externally-managed secret referenced via auth.sasl.bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef, causing SCRAM authentication to fail from the operator and other chart-owned clients.

charts/redpanda: v25.3.5

Fixed

• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Fixed an issue where the bootstrap user password was not loaded from an externally-managed secret referenced via auth.sasl.bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef, causing SCRAM authentication to fail from the operator and other chart-owned clients.

charts/redpanda: v25.2.5

Fixed

• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Fixed an issue where the bootstrap user password was not loaded from an externally-managed secret referenced via auth.sasl.bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef, causing SCRAM authentication to fail from the operator and other chart-owned clients.

operator: v26.2.1-beta.1

Added

• Beta support for StretchCluster that allows deploying operator across multiple kubernetes clusters and creating Redpanda clusters out of Nodepools from different clusters. Requires a valid Redpanda enterprise license.
• rpk k8s multicluster plugin for bootstrapping, and interacting with StretchClusters.
• Multicluster-aware leader election so multiple operator replicas in the same Kubernetes cluster can take part in the global raft quorum while only the local lease holder votes.
• Multicluster PVC unbinder controller that extends stuck-Pod / volume-affinity remediation across all provider clusters.
• Kubeconfig cache on every raft member so a newly elected leader can engage peer clusters without needing live gRPC round-trips to every other operator at promotion time.
• NodePool CRD is installed automatically when the operator is deployed in multicluster mode.
• Per-peer operator Services to support Kubernetes cluster mesh (MCS / Cilium global service) setups for the multicluster raft transport.
• Opt-in pandaproxy_client.use_localhost / schema_registry_client.use_localhost settings on v1 Cluster CRs to use localhost for internal Schema Registry and Pandaproxy clients.
• rpk k8s multicluster bootstrap --loadbalancer flag that provisions a dedicated per-cluster peer LoadBalancer Service, waits for the provider to publish an address, and bakes that address into each peer's cert SANs — removing the previous redeploy cycle needed to bootstrap operators over public load balancers. On completion prints a ready-to-paste multicluster.peers helm-values block.

Changed

• Attempts to unset redpanda.storage.mode on a Topic are now a no-op to avoid warn-level log spam in the broker.
• Bumped Go to 1.26.1, controller-runtime to the matching release, and updated a range of dependencies (OpenTelemetry v1.43.0, grpc, containerd, golang.org/x/net, go-chi, buger/jsonparser) to address Snyk and govulncheck findings.

Fixed

• Ensure that the field manager "helm" gets removed in migration job to clear out field managers that might be set when migrating from helm to the operator.
• Fixed an issue with post-upgrade processing of cluster configuration that resulted in configuration errors due to removed properties across Redpanda versions.
• Fixed issue with ballast file tuning where the tuning container didn't mount the proper directory needed for propagating the ballast file to the main container.
• Removed more historic field managers that have caused problems with changes to StatefulSets.
• Fixed hot reconcile loops on healthy Redpanda clusters driven by two independent root causes: the setStatusCondition helper treated a zero rate limit as "force an update" (because time.Since(anything) > 0 is always true), and non-deterministic map iteration over features.Features flipped the stored InUseFeatures value on every reconcile. InUseFeatures is now sorted before comparison, the zero-rate-limit case is handled correctly, and the condition heartbeat rate limit was stretched from 1 minute to 5 minutes. Rate-limited heartbeats for License and Configuration conditions are preserved.
• Fixed an issue where the operator failed to authenticate to the Redpanda cluster with SCRAM when bootstrapUser.secretKeyRef pointed at an externally-managed secret.
• Fixed Schema Registry ACL sync failures on v1alpha1 Cluster resources that configured SR via the legacy single schemaRegistry field instead of the schemaRegistryApi slice — SchemaRegistryInternalListener now checks both fields and the factory routes the no-SR case to the graceful skip path.
• Fixed namespace-scoped operator deployments logging reconcile errors for resources in other namespaces; non-matching namespaces are now filtered before the initial fetch instead of entering exponential backoff.

operator: v26.1.2

Fixed

• Ensure that the field manager "helm" gets removed in migration job to clear out field managers that might be set when migrating from helm to the operator.
• Fixed an issue with post-upgrade processing of cluster configuration that resulted in configuration errors due to removed properties across Redpanda versions.

operator: v25.3.3

Fixed

• Fixed issue with elevated reconciliation rates for ShadowLinks in large cluster deployments.
• Remove helm-controller field ownership to ensure old clusters deployed pre-Flux removal don't run into errors with accidentally merging fields that should otherwise be removed/overwritten.
• Ensure that the field manager "helm" gets removed in migration job to clear out field managers that might be set when migrating from helm to the operator.
• Fixed an issue with post-upgrade processing of cluster configuration that resulted in configuration errors due to removed properties across Redpanda versions.

operator: v25.2.3

Fixed

• Fixed issue with elevated reconciliation rates for ShadowLinks in large cluster deployments.
• Remove helm-controller field ownership to ensure old clusters deployed pre-Flux removal don't run into errors with accidentally merging fields that should otherwise be removed/overwritten.
• Ensure that the field manager "helm" gets removed in migration job to clear out field managers that might be set when migrating from helm to the operator.
• Fixed an issue with post-upgrade processing of cluster configuration that resulted in configuration errors due to removed properties across Redpanda versions.