Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) May 2026 Newsletter

Welcome to the May 2026 edition of the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) Newsletter.

We didn't send out an edition in April due to the volume of other staff messages sent to the maintainer mailing lists.

We look forward to seeing many of you at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India next month!

CNCF staff will be at the various maintainer-focused activities on June 18-19.

• The .project Repository Rollout Has Started
• Cloud Native Community Groups Migration
• Kapa.ai Tech Doc Assistants Now Available
• PR Support for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan
• CNCF Maintainer and End User Contributor Program

The .project Repository Rollout Has Started

The CNCF is officially rolling out .project repositories across all projects. This effort is designed to make maintainer records and project metadata consistent and accurate.

If your project is currently applying to move levels within the CNCF, this rollout is being prioritized for your organization right now. However, all CNCF projects need to start prepping their data.

To ensure a seamless transition and prevent any interruptions to your access to CNCF resources, the Service Desk, and maintainer mailing lists, etc., we need projects to take the following steps.

What You Need to Do

• Keep Maintainer Data Up to Date: Ensure your project's existing MAINTAINERS.md or CODEOWNERS files in your main repository are accurate. The CNCF staff will automatically provision your new .project repository and generate an initial pull request based on these files.
• Link GitHub Handles to LFID: Every listed maintainer must link their GitHub handle to their Linux Foundation ID (LFID). You can do this at OpenProfile.
• Verify Email Settings: Look over OpenProfile Email Management and ensure your primary email preferences are correct. These addresses are used directly for access management and maintainer outreach.
• Review and Merge Your PR: Once the CNCF team provisions your .project repository, look out for the pending maintainer verification PR. Please review, update, and merge it!

Questions or Support?

If your team runs into any issues or has questions about the transition, please reach out directly to the CNCF projects team or open a ticket via the Service Desk.

Cloud Native Community Groups Migration

We've successfully migrated our community groups from Bevy to the new Open Community Group platform. Organizers are already seeing value in the built-in Call for Speakers (CFS) workflow and the ability to contribute directly to the platform's development, ensuring our tooling stays as open as our code.

Kapa.ai Tech Doc Assistants Now Available

As projects grow, maintainers increasingly spend time responding to the same technical questions across Slack, Discord, and GitHub issues. Many of these are already answered in the documentation. CNCF has partnered with Kapa.ai to provide free tech doc assistants to our projects.

PR Support for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan

We're currently organizing the official news package for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan (July 29-30). If your project has a major release or milestone planned for the event, let us know and we can help amplify it via the CNCF blog and social channels. Learn more.

CNCF Maintainer and End User Contributor Program

We're inviting projects and end users to contribute original bylined articles to The New Stack, a publication covering cloud native technologies. This initiative aims to amplify voices within the CNCF community, share cloud native stories and experiences, and highlight the interesting work being done across projects and organizations. Learn more.

See you next month

Please let us know if you have any suggestions for future newsletter content by sending an email to projects@cncf.io.

You can also continue discussions with other maintainers in the #maintainer-circle Slack channel.

🫶 Daniel, Jeefy, Bob, Nate, Jorge, Riaan, Ihor, Robert and the rest of the CNCF staff