Google Cloud release notes

The following release notes cover the most recent changes over the last 60 days. For a comprehensive list of product-specific release notes, see the individual product release note pages.

You can also see and filter all release notes in the Cloud de Confiance console or you can programmatically access release notes in BigQuery.

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March 12, 2026

Cloud Storage
Change

Object uploads that use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) now fail if the Cloud Storage service agent lacks the necessary IAM role to decrypt the object. For steps to grant the required role, see Assign a Cloud KMS key to a service agent.

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R10) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R10) Version updates

Change

(2026-R10) Version updates

Change

(2026-R10) Version updates

Change

(2026-R10) Version updates

Change

(2026-R10) Version updates

March 11, 2026

Compute Engine
Issue

To address high-severity kernel vulnerabilities (including CVE-2025-21756 and CVE-2025-38052) in Rocky Linux 8 and 9, updates are available for the Compute Engine images maintained by CIQ. If your VM instances use images dated before September 2025 (version v20250912), you must take action to ensure you continue to receive security patches.

How to determine if your Compute Engine VMs are affected

You are affected if your VM instance uses a Rocky Linux image from an -optimized-gcp or -optimized-gcp-nvidia family with a version date older than v20250912 (for example, rocky-linux-9-optimized-gcp-v20250807). To check your VM's source image, see View VM instance image details. You can view details for these image families in Rocky Linux OS details.

Action required

  • If your image version is v20250912 or later: Your VM is already configured to use the newer SIG/Cloud Next (SCN) repositories and is receiving security updates. No action is required.

  • If your image version is older than v20250912: Your VM is configured to use legacy SIG/Cloud repositories that no longer receive regular kernel updates and won't receive future security patches. While running sudo dnf update applies a one-time patch for the vulnerabilities listed, you must manually migrate the VM to the SCN repositories to receive ongoing updates by following the CIQ migration guide.

March 10, 2026

Cloud Storage
Feature

Rapid Bucket is now generally available. Rapid Bucket lets you store objects in the Rapid storage class by defining a zone as a bucket's location. This architecture optimizes data access and I/O performance between your storage and compute resources. Rapid Bucket is most suitable for data-intensive workloads like AI/ML and high-scale data analytics.

For more information, see Rapid Bucket and Create zonal buckets.

March 09, 2026

Cloud SQL for MySQL
Feature

You can now execute SQL statements using the Cloud SQL Data API for administrative queries.

Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
Feature

You can now execute SQL statements using the Cloud SQL Data API for administrative queries.

March 05, 2026

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R9) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R9) Version updates

Change

(2026-R9) Version updates

Change

(2026-R9) Version updates

Change

(2026-R9) Version updates

Change

(2026-R9) Version updates

March 04, 2026

Compute Engine
Feature

Generally available: You can use managed constraints with Organization Policy Service for centralized, programmatic control of your Compute Engine resources. Managed constraints replace legacy compute.* constraints and are identifiable by the compute.managed.* prefix. They also include built-in support for safe rollout tools like Policy Simulator and dry run mode.

For more information, see Organization policies for Compute Engine and Managed constraints.

March 02, 2026

Compute Engine
Feature

Generally available: You can apply compact placement policies to standalone Flex-start VMs. These policies let you colocate your standalone Flex-start VMs as close to each other as possible. Applying a compact placement policy minimizes network hops and improves the performance of latency-sensitive workloads. For more information, see About compact placement policies and About Flex-start VMs.

February 25, 2026

Cloud NGFW
Feature

You can use network contexts to meet your security goals by using fewer firewall policy rules more efficiently. For more information, see Network contexts. This feature is available in General Availability.

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R8) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2228001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2172001 is no longer available in the Stable channel.
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
    • GKE upgrades clusters to the following new minor versions if there are no factors, such as maintenance exclusions or deprecated APIs, preventing upgrades:
    • GKE upgrades clusters to the following new patch versions if no minor version upgrade is available, or if the cluster has maintenance exclusions or other factors preventing minor version upgrades:

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R8) Version updates

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2228001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2172001 is no longer available in the Stable channel.
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
    • GKE upgrades clusters to the following new minor versions if there are no factors, such as maintenance exclusions or deprecated APIs, preventing upgrades:
    • GKE upgrades clusters to the following new patch versions if no minor version upgrade is available, or if the cluster has maintenance exclusions or other factors preventing minor version upgrades:
Change

(2026-R8) Version updates

Change

(2026-R8) Version updates

Change

(2026-R8) Version updates

Change

(2026-R8) Version updates

February 19, 2026

Cloud NGFW
Feature

Cloud NGFW now supports regional system firewall policies. Regional system firewall policies are read-only policies that internal Google services, such as Google Kubernetes Engine, use to secure their operations within a VPC network. For more information, see Regional system firewall policies. This feature is available in General Availability.

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R7) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2172001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1734000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2118001
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R7) Version updates

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2172001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1734000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2118001
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
Change

(2026-R7) Version updates

Change

(2026-R7) Version updates

Change

(2026-R7) Version updates

Change

(2026-R7) Version updates

February 18, 2026

Google Cloud Armor
Change

Cloud Armor preconfigured WAF rules support for inspection up to the first 64 kB (either 8 kB, 16 kB, 32 kB, 48 kB, or 64 kB) of the request body content is Generally Available.

February 12, 2026

Compute Engine
Feature

Generally available: You can use instance flexibility to improve resource availability when creating VMs in bulk in a region. With instance flexibility, you specify one or more suitable machine types for your workload. Compute Engine then provisions VMs from the list of machine types based on capacity and quota availability.

For more information, see About instance flexibility for VMs created in bulk and Create VMs in bulk with instance flexibility.

February 11, 2026

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R6) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2118001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1728000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2100001
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R6) Version updates

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2118001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1728000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2100001
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
Change

(2026-R6) Version updates

Change

(2026-R6) Version updates

Change

(2026-R6) Version updates

Change

(2026-R6) Version updates

February 09, 2026

Compute Engine
Feature

You can autoscale a managed instance group (MIG) that has instance flexibility configured. Autoscaling lets the MIG create or delete virtual machine instances based on an increase or decrease in load. For more information, see About instance flexibility.

Virtual Private Cloud
Feature

You can bring your own IPv6 global unicast addresses (GUAs) to assign to a subnet's internal IPv6 address range. Although GUAs are typically public addresses, in this configuration they are used privately and function in the same way as Google Cloud-provisioned ULAs.

For more information, see Bring your own IP addresses.

February 04, 2026

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R5) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

  • Version 1.34.3-gke.1051003 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Regular channel.
  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2228001 is now available in the Regular channel.
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Regular channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1734000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2118001
    • 1.34.1-gke.3971002
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:

Stable channel

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2100001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1711000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2072001
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R5) Version updates

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2100001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1711000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2072001
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
Change

(2026-R5) Version updates

  • Version 1.34.3-gke.1051003 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Regular channel.
  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2228001 is now available in the Regular channel.
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Regular channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1734000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2118001
    • 1.34.1-gke.3971002
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
Change

(2026-R5) Version updates

Change

(2026-R5) Version updates

Change

(2026-R5) Version updates

Virtual Private Cloud
Feature

You can create individual static external IPv4 addresses from bring your own IP addresses (BYOIP) prefixes. This feature is available in General Availability and only applies to IPv4 regional v2 prefixes that are created after December 13, 2025.

For more information, see Enhanced IP address allocation.

January 30, 2026

Cloud Storage
Announcement

Object change notification is deprecated on January 30, 2026. To generate notifications for changes to objects, use Pub/Sub notifications for Cloud Storage instead.

January 29, 2026

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R4) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2072001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1675000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2019000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2072000
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R4) Version updates

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2072001 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.32.9-gke.1675000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2019000
    • 1.33.5-gke.2072000
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
Change

(2026-R4) Version updates

Change

(2026-R4) Version updates

Change

(2026-R4) Version updates

Change

(2026-R4) Version updates

January 28, 2026

Cloud Storage
Feature

Previously, when listing buckets by using the client libraries, JSON API, or RPC API, the request returned an error if some buckets couldn't be reached because a location was temporarily unavailable. You can now use a partial success option to return a list of buckets that are available, as well as the names of any buckets that can't be reached.

January 23, 2026

Cloud Load Balancing
Feature

Application Load Balancers now support the configuration of a traffic duration setting when you add backends to the backend services. You can configure this setting as SHORT or LONG based on the response time needed by backends to complete HTTP requests.

Application Load Balancers also support the use of a new in-flight balancing mode that lets you configure the load balancer's traffic distribution to supported backends when requests take more than a second to complete.

This feature is available in Preview.

January 22, 2026

Virtual Private Cloud
Feature

You can use Private Service Connect backends to access published services. For more information, see About Private Service Connect backends.

January 21, 2026

Cloud Storage
Feature

Bucket relocation with write downtime now supports completed multipart uploads. If a multipart upload is started before relocation begins and is completed before the final synchronization step, the objects are successfully relocated. In-progress multipart uploads continue to block the final synchronization step until they are either completed or cancelled. For more information, see Bucket relocation overview.

Google Kubernetes Engine
Change

(2026-R3) Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters.

The following versions are now available for new GKE clusters, and for manual control plane upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. For more information about versioning and upgrades, see GKE versioning and support and About GKE cluster upgrades.

Rapid channel

Regular channel

Stable channel

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2019000 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.31.14-gke.1081000
    • 1.31.14-gke.1114000
    • 1.32.9-gke.1632000
    • 1.33.5-gke.1956000
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:

Extended channel

No channel

Change

(2026-R3) Version updates

  • Version 1.33.5-gke.2019000 is now the default version for cluster creation in the Stable channel.
  • The following versions are now available in the Stable channel:
  • The following versions are no longer available in the Stable channel:
    • 1.31.14-gke.1081000
    • 1.31.14-gke.1114000
    • 1.32.9-gke.1632000
    • 1.33.5-gke.1956000
  • Clusters in this channel running the listed minor version have new general auto-upgrade targets. GKE can upgrade control planes and nodes to the following new versions with this release:
Change

(2026-R3) Version updates

Change

(2026-R3) Version updates

Change

(2026-R3) Version updates

Change

(2026-R3) Version updates

January 20, 2026

Cloud Interconnect
Feature

Dedicated Cloud Interconnect support is available in the following colocation facilities:

  • Bangkok, Thailand

For more information, see the Locations table and Global locations.

Cloud VPN
Feature

Cloud VPN is now available in region asia-southeast3 (Bangkok, Thailand). For more information, see Global locations.

Pricing is available on the Cloud VPN pricing page.