Welcome to the January 2026 edition of the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) Newsletter.
In 2025 we saw continued project growth, with the TOC accepting an additional six projects to close out the year. The speed at which projects join the CNCF and advance through levels has improved thanks to better processes, and we've expanded the variety of services available to maintainers through new partnerships with providers. We are committed to serving our 2,000+ maintainers and 300,000+ contributors even better in 2026.
Please take a moment to complete the 2H 2025 Maintainer Survey. Your feedback is vital for us to serve you better this year. The survey will close on January 30th, so please respond as soon as you can!
Last year, the CNCF and Docker announced an expanded partnership through the Docker Sponsored Open Source (DSOS) Program to increase infrastructure and tooling support available to CNCF project maintainers. Since then, Docker has made Docker Hardened Images (DHI) freely available to all developers.
We are highlighting this update for the benefit of the CNCF maintainer community, as DHI can be used by CNCF projects as a secure and transparent foundation for shipping container images.
Maintaining a CNCF project involves managing critical infrastructure at scale, including publishing trusted images and ensuring dependencies remain secure. To support these efforts, the CNCF-Docker partnership (announced in 2025) enables CNCF projects to access Docker's Sponsored Open Source (DSOS) program. DSOS provides essential infrastructure and security tools specifically for non-commercial open-source maintainers.
Here is what you need to know about the benefits, eligibility, and how to apply.
Project Proposals Open: Wednesday, January 7 – Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Mentee Applications Open: Monday, January 26 – Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 11AM PST (19:00 UTC)
Application Review Period: Wednesday, February 11 – Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 11AM PST (19:00 UTC)
In addition to LFX, the CNCF is planning on being a Mentoring Organization again this year for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and can help projects looking to participate in the program.
This is a fantastic opportunity to increase your project's contributor community and get valuable work done!
In 2026, GSoC is actively looking to bring in more projects in the areas of Security and AI/ML.
Organizations application period: Monday, Jan 19, to Tuesday, Feb 3, 2026
CNCF Project proposals submissions recommendation: Wednesday Jan 14, 2026
Note, proposals can still be submitted after this recommended date, but the Mentorship team needs time to evaluate the proposals and package our application.
The more proposals we have, the stronger our org application will be.
We're looking forward to seeing all the project ideas you're interested in working on!
Welcome to the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) December 2025 (Year End Edition).
It's been an amazing 2025 with record project growth, improvements in the speed that projects join the CNCF and move levels, and the breadth of new services we've made available to maintainers.
We look forward to helping your projects make an even greater impact in 2026.
And please take the 2H 2025 Maintainer Survey when you have a chance. It will help us serve you better in the coming year.
Thank you, we hope you enjoy the end of year downtime and we wish you the best in the new year!
We are excited to officially roll out GitHub Copilot Enterprise to CNCF project maintainers!
As highlighted during the CNCF Maintainers Summit in Atlanta back in November, this offering is tailored to help reduce maintainer burnout by automating the repetitive parts of software development. This post outlines the specific features available to you, best practices for sustainable usage, and the step-by-step process to request access today.
CFPs and the Project Opportunities Interest Form for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 are closing soon! CFP for Maintainer Track, Contribfest, and Project Lightning Talks closes on Sunday, 14 December, and the Kiosk + PR Interest Form closes on Wednesday, 17 December, both at 23:59 local time.
Please visit the Project Opportunities page to learn more about the benefits, deadlines, how to sign up, and more.
Kindly note that due to high demand, space is limited and there is a high possibility that not all projects will be able to participate as we are not able to accept all requests.
Greetings maintainers! We have some exciting updates about resources newly available to you and your projects.
And please make sure to take the maintainer survey! This is your chance to tell us how we're doing, gauge your understanding of the benefits of hosting a project at the CNCF, and influence our priorities in 2026.
We are excited to announce an expanded partnership with GitHub to provide free Copilot Enterprise licenses to CNCF project maintainers. This benefit is part of a limited pilot program and will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Eligibility will be validated against the list at maintainers.cncf.io, so please ensure your project's information is up to date.
Through the Docker Sponsored Open Source Program, project maintainers gain access to upgraded registry, security, and support services. These include unlimited Docker Hub image pulls, sponsored OSS status, Docker Scout for vulnerability analysis, automated image builds, usage metrics, and streamlined support. Request access via the Service Desk.
The CNCF has moved its community calendar to PCC which now enables maintainers to publish and update their own entries on the CNCF community calendar. This eliminates a project and staff bottleneck as entries were previously handled as Service Desk tickets. PCC also recently added an often-requested feature: the automatic upload of project meetings to the project's designated YouTube channel. Projects have control over any video changes before publication.
ask.cncf.io is an AI assistant built with Dosu designed to answer questions about the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem, including projects, governance, events, and contributor information. This is not a general LLM chatbot. It only contains information from official repositories and documentation across the CNCF. Give it a try and come back often to see how it improves over time.
We've relaunched the contribute.cncf.io site 🎉. This site serves as the primary place for maintainers to learn about what benefits they have as a CNCF project and helps expand our funnel of new maintainers for your projects. You can also submit pull requests to improve content.
Service Desk is where you can make a variety of requests, ask questions, and connect with CNCF staff.
Please make sure all of your maintainers are up to date on maintainers.cncf.io. This is how we validate Maintainer Summit registrations, send invites to Service Desk, and make sure projects are up to speed on upcoming event opportunities.
Stay tuned for guidance on binary signing for Apple and Microsoft desktop applications! The Linux Foundation is launching an organization-wide program soon.
Please fill out the survey so we can serve you better
Yes, another reminder 🙂. Please make sure to take the maintainer survey! This is your chance to tell us how we're doing, gauge your understanding of the benefits of hosting a project at the CNCF, and influence our priorities in 2026.
Recognizes excellence in technical contributions to CNCF and its projects. The
CNCF Top Committer has made key commits to projects and, more importantly,
contributes in a way that benefits the project neutrally as a whole.
Given to a community member who helps behind the scenes, dedicating countless
hours of their time to open source projects + completing often thankless tasks
for the ecosystem's benefit.
Given to a community member who has shown excellence in documentation
contributions to CNCF and its projects. Excellent technical documentation is
one of the best ways projects can lower the barrier for contribution.
This award recognizes an impactful contributor to the CNCF Technical Advisory
Groups. This individual has broad reach and significant impact in growing the
TAG ecosystem.
Greeting maintainers! We have a few things that need your attention in order to get us in the mindset for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA. The first is taking the time to recognize our peers for their outstanding work in 2025. The second item is making sure our swag is as awesome as you are. Third, submit your Maintainer Summit CFP talks!
Deadline Summary
Maintainer Summit Contributor Award Nominations - August 15th
T-shirt Design Deadline - August 8th (announced August 12th)
In previous years, the Kubernetes community recognized contributors who have gone above and beyond with the annual Kubernetes Contributor Awards. With the creation of a Maintainer Summit, we want to expand this to all graduated projects! All graduated projects will now be able to nominate contributors to receive a physical award, usually in the form of a square canvas print. Projects may only submit for awards once per calendar year. That means if a project submits for Maintainer Summit EU 2026, they cannot submit again for NA 2026.
Nominations
Graduated projects will be nominating individuals for the awards. Projects must submit nominations by August 15th! This is a way to highlight individuals who have had a major impact on your project and exemplify the values of our communities.
Larger graduated projects with multiple SIGs are encouraged to nominate 2-3 people per SIG/WG
Smaller graduated projects should target 2-3 nominees
Please nominate contributors doing outstanding work in your projects by filling out this form. The deadline for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA (Atlanta) is August 15th!
KubeCon NA Maintainer Summit T-Shirt Design
It’s time to flex that creative muscle! For this Maintainer Summit we want to solicit designs for our attendee t-shirts! Anyone eligible to attend the maintainer summit can submit art ideas, and the designs will be chosen by this summit’s program chairs.
Design submissions should follow these guidelines:
Vector (svg) format.Inkscape is a free, open source tool that can be used to create vector graphics.
Use 3 colors (5 max). The cost of printing increases with each color added. The fewer colors you use, the more affordable it will be for the community to have swag produced.
The CNCF Code of Conductapplies. Submissions that do not follow the code of conduct will not be considered.
No AI. AI-generated image content is not permitted in any form due to the likelihood of infringement. Do not use AI-generated imagery in any way in your design.
The deadline to submit is August 8th, and the winner will be chosen and informed August 12th.
Submit your awesome T-Shirt designs by filling out this form.
KubeCon NA Maintainer Summit CFP
This one is pretty self explanatory. The CFP closes EOD Monday, July 21st. If you haven’t submitted a talk, and want to, now’s the time to panic and pull something together!
