Runtime Briefing — Kubernetes 1.26 Release
Kubernetes 1.26 arrived on 8 December 2022 with PodSecurity admission graduating to stable, sidecar container support progressing, and CRI image builds maturing, demanding runtime validation and policy updates.
Executive briefing: Kubernetes v1.26 “Stargazer” became generally available on , advancing security controls and extensibility for production clusters.
Key capabilities
- PodSecurity admission GA. Built-in namespace-level policy enforcement replaces deprecated PodSecurityPolicies and requires rule tuning for workloads.
- Sidecar containers. The
alpha.kubernetes.io/init-containerreplacement lands as an alpha feature, shaping operator patterns for service meshes and proxies. - CRI image builds. CRI-based image management moves forward, encouraging adoption of
cri-dockerdalternatives in preparation for dockershim removal.
Upgrade checklist
- Audit namespace security labels and admission configurations before enabling the stable PodSecurity admission controller in production.
- Coordinate with service mesh and observability teams to evaluate sidecar lifecycle changes introduced in v1.26.
- Validate node images, CNI plugins, and admission webhooks against v1.26 APIs through staging rollouts and conformance testing.