Docs Self-Managed Get Started What’s New Redpanda What’s New in Redpanda Page options Copy as Markdown Copied! View as plain text Ask AI about this topic Add MCP server to VS Code This topic includes new content added in version 25.3. For a complete list of all product updates, see the Redpanda release notes. See also: What’s New in Redpanda Cloud Redpanda Cloud vs Self-Managed feature compatibility Redpanda v25.3 introduces breaking schema changes for Iceberg topics. If you are using Iceberg topics and want to retain the data in the corresponding Iceberg tables, review Schema Changes and Migration Guide for Iceberg Topics in Redpanda v25.3 before upgrading your cluster, and follow the required migration steps to avoid sending new records to a dead-letter queue table. Iceberg topics with GCP BigLake A new REST catalog integration with Google Cloud BigLake allows you to add Redpanda topics as Iceberg tables in your data lakehouse. See Use Iceberg Catalogs for details on configuring Iceberg REST catalog integrations with Redpanda. Shadowing Redpanda v25.3 introduces Shadowing, an enterprise-licensed disaster recovery solution that provides asynchronous, offset-preserving replication between distinct Redpanda clusters. Shadowing enables cross-region data protection by replicating topic data, configurations, consumer group offsets, ACLs, and Schema Registry data with byte-level fidelity. The shadow cluster operates in read-only mode while continuously receiving updates from the source cluster. During a disaster, you can failover individual topics or an entire shadow link to make resources fully writable for production traffic. See Failover Runbook for emergency procedures. Connected client monitoring You can view details about Kafka client connections using rpk or the Admin API ListKafkaConnections endpoint. This allows you to view detailed information about active client connections on a cluster, and identify and troubleshoot problematic clients. For more information, see the connected client details example in the Manage Throughput guide. New Admin API style Redpanda v25.3 introduces a new API style for the Admin API, powered by ConnectRPC. New Redpanda features and operations in v25.3 are available as ConnectRPC services, allowing you to use autogenerated Protobuf clients in addition to using HTTP clients such as curl. Use the new ConnectRPC endpoints with the following v25.3 features: Shadowing Connected client monitoring Existing Admin API endpoints from versions earlier than 25.3 remain supported, and you can continue to use them as usual. See Manage Redpanda with the Admin API to learn more about Admin API, and the Admin API reference to view the new endpoints. Schema Registry import mode Redpanda Schema Registry now supports an import mode that allows you to import existing schemas and retain their current IDs and version numbers. Import mode is useful when migrating from another schema registry. Starting with this release, import mode must be used when importing schemas. Read-write mode no longer allows specifying a schema ID and version when registering a schema. See Use the Schema Registry API. Security report You can now generate a security report for your Redpanda cluster using the /v1/security/report Admin API endpoint. The report provides detailed information about TLS configuration, authentication methods, authorization status, and security alerts across all Redpanda interfaces (Kafka, RPC, Admin, Schema Registry, HTTP Proxy). Topic identifiers Redpanda v25.3 implements topic identifiers using 16 byte UUIDs as proposed in KIP-516. New commands Redpanda v25.3 introduces the following rpk shadow commands for managing Redpanda shadow links: rpk shadow config generate - Generate configuration files for shadow links rpk shadow create - Create new shadow links rpk shadow update - Update existing shadow link configurations rpk shadow list - List all shadow links rpk shadow describe - View shadow link configuration details rpk shadow status - Monitor shadow link replication status rpk shadow failover - Perform emergency failover operations rpk shadow delete - Delete shadow links In addition, the following commands have been added: rpk cluster connections - Monitor cluster connections and client statistics. rpk redpanda config print - Display node configuration. New configuration properties Redpanda 25.3 introduces the following configuration properties: Shadowing: enable_shadow_linking: Enable shadow links (Enterprise license required) Timestamp validation: log_message_timestamp_after_max_ms: Maximum timestamp difference for future records log_message_timestamp_before_max_ms: Maximum timestamp difference for past records message.timestamp.after.max.ms: Topic-level timestamp validation (future) message.timestamp.before.max.ms: Topic-level timestamp validation (past) Audit logging: audit_use_rpc: Use internal RPCs for audit logging Object storage: cloud_storage_client_lease_timeout_ms: Object storage connection timeout Iceberg: iceberg_dlq_table_suffix: Iceberg DLQ table name suffix iceberg_rest_catalog_gcp_user_project: GCP project for Iceberg REST catalog billing iceberg_topic_name_dot_replacement: Dot replacement in Iceberg table names TLS: tls_v1_2_cipher_suites: TLS 1.2 cipher suites for client connections tls_v1_3_cipher_suites: TLS 1.3 cipher suites for client connections Other configuration: controller_backend_reconciliation_concurrency: Maximum concurrent controller reconciliation operations kafka_max_message_size_upper_limit_bytes: Maximum allowed max.message.size topic property value kafka_produce_batch_validation: Validation level for produced batches log_compaction_disable_tx_batch_removal: Disable transactional batch removal during compaction sasl_mechanisms_overrides: SASL authentication mechanisms per listener Changes to default values The following configuration properties have new default values in v25.3: core_balancing_continuous: Changed from false to true (Enterprise license required). partition_autobalancing_mode: Changed from node_add to continuous (Enterprise license required). iceberg_throttle_backlog_size_ratio: Changed from 0.3 to null. Deprecations The following configuration properties have been deprecated in v25.3 and will be removed in a future release: kafka_memory_batch_size_estimate_for_fetch: No replacement. Remove from configuration. log_message_timestamp_alert_after_ms: Use log_message_timestamp_after_max_ms instead. log_message_timestamp_alert_before_ms: Use log_message_timestamp_before_max_ms instead. raft_recovery_default_read_size: No replacement. Remove from configuration. Deprecated features Redpanda has deprecated support for specific TLSv1.2 and TLSv1.3 cipher suites and now uses more secure defaults. See Deprecated Features for the complete list. Back to top × Simple online edits For simple changes, such as fixing a typo, you can edit the content directly on GitHub. Edit on GitHub Or, open an issue to let us know about something that you want us to change. Open an issue Contribution guide For extensive content updates, or if you prefer to work locally, read our contribution guide . 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