Since then, Kafka 4.1.0 was released (September 2025, see detailed release notes), with around 472 Kafka Improvement (KIPs), including new features, improvements, bug fixes, tests, and more—well done to the Apache Kafka open source community! Kafka 4.1.1 (a bugfix release) was made available on the NetApp Instaclustr Managed Platform in December 2025.
So, what’s changed from 4.0 to 4.1.0? What are the most interesting improvements (for me at least)? In this blog, we focus on a new improvement, the Streams Rebalance Protocol.
Click through for that list.