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Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) July 2026 Newsletter

· 6 min read
Daniel Krook
Daniel Krook
Senior Director of Developer Experience
Ihor Dvoretskyi
Ihor Dvoretskyi
Senior Developer Advocate
Jorge O. Castro
Jorge O. Castro
Developer Relations
Jeffrey Sica
Jeffrey Sica
Head of Projects
Bob Killen
Bob Killen
Senior Technical Program Manager
Nate W.
Nate W.
Head of Mentorship and Documentation
Riaan Kleinhans
Riaan Kleinhans
Technical Program Manager
Robert Kielty
Robert Kielty
Projects Team

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

We hope you enjoyed KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan this week and we look forward to seeing many of you at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China soon!

CNCF staff will be at the various maintainer-focused activities in Shanghai on September 8-9.

Please take a moment to complete the 2H 2026 Maintainer Survey. Your feedback is essential for us to serve you better in the second half of the year.

.project Updates​

The .project rollout continues to gain momentum - 152 projects now have a .project repository, with more onboarding every day. Each .project repo gives a project a single, authoritative maintainers.yaml as the source of truth for its maintainers. For the full background, see Introducing .project for Maintainers.

Across those 152 projects we're now tracking 1,380 maintainers. Of those, 276 don't yet have a GitHub handle connected to an LFX profile (no matching profile data on record), so we can't reliably link them to their contributions and CNCF services.

Our project team staff are also reviewing each project's maintainers.yaml for accuracy against the legacy maintainers lists. A couple of things to watch for:

  • Review-and-merge PRs - In many cases we're opening pull requests directly against a project's /.project/maintainers.yaml. If your project has an open PR against /.project/maintainers.yaml, please review and merge it as soon as possible - these updates are how we keep the source of truth accurate for downstream CNCF services (mailing lists, PCC access, dashboards).

  • LFX profile updates - In other cases we'll ask maintainers to update their profile at openprofile.dev and confirm their GitHub account is linked - this is exactly what closes the gap for those 276 unconnected maintainers.

Thanks for your partnership - these quick steps keep your maintainer data accurate and trustworthy.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Survey​

At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Chicago 2023, Oracle donated cloud credits to CNCF projects to use over the course of 3 years.

Since then, roughly 1 in 5 of our projects has put them to work.

Now we're collecting use cases to highlight how these credits have helped our community. The survey takes about 4 minutes.

The form will ask about:

  • What you're running on OCI (CI/CD, hosting, testing, AI workloads, etc.) and roughly what scale
  • Anything you're doing on OCI that's hard to do elsewhere, or that OCI does noticeably better
  • Any feedback for the Oracle team, good or bad

We're using these answers to size, scope, and shape the next phase of the partnership, so concrete details help significantly.

Seeking End User Case Studies and Reference Architectures​

If you're aware of organizations using your project in interesting and innovative ways, encourage them to submit their case studies for a chance to highlight it on the keynote stage in Shanghai.

As part of the same initiative, we're also looking for end user reference architectures based on your projects to highlight at a keynote at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in Salt Lake City.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2026 Opportunities and Deadlines​

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2026 – Scholarships & Travel Funding Deadlines​

RegionTypeApplication DeadlineNotifications
North America🎓 ScholarshipsComing SoonComing Soon
North America✈️ Travel FundingComing SoonComing Soon

Observability Summit Europe​

The schedule is live. Register by July 31 (today) to get Early Bird pricing for Observability Summit Europe.

Maintainer Summit North America​

Join fellow maintainers on Sunday, November 8 for a day of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and community building.

Before registering, please review the eligibility requirements to ensure you qualify to participate. If you've already adopted .project for your maintainer list, the CSV that's mentioned will be updated on your behalf.

Maintainer Summit NA

Register for the Maintainer Summit today!

Attendance at the Maintainer Summit requires separate registration for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America​

Mark your calendar! The Maintainer Track, ContribFest, and Project Lightning Talk schedules for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America will be announced on Wednesday, August 5. Stay tuned to see the full lineup and start planning your event experience!

Kubeflow Virtual Event​

Congratulations to Kubeflow for graduating in July! To learn more about how folks are using GenAI and MLOps with Kubeflow register for the community showcase on August 19.

Please Complete the 2H 2026 Maintainer Survey​

We're entering the second half of the year, and that means another maintainer survey. We run them twice a year to measure maintainer awareness of available resources, including support from CNCF staff, Linux Foundation tools, the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), and the Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs). This is your chance to provide feedback to make sure the CNCF remains the best place for maintainers to host a cloud native project.

Take the Maintainer Survey

Help us help you: maintainers-survey.cncf.io

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