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Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) September 2026 Newsletter

· 7 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 September 2026 edition of the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) Newsletter.

We hope you enjoyed KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China this month and we look forward to seeing many of you at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in a few short weeks!

Please take a moment to complete the 2H 2026 Maintainer Survey. Your feedback helps us improve the tools, workflows, and support programs that directly affect how CNCF projects operate, scale, and onboard maintainers.

.project Updates​

Where we are today:

  • 221 CNCF projects now have a .project repository as the canonical source for their maintainer roster - up from 195 last month.
  • 217 of those (98%) are fully activated on downstream automation - CNCF mailing list sync and Jira Service Desk customer sync run against their .project/maintainers.yaml.
  • 4 projects have a .project repo but are still in audit / roster alignment before activation.
  • Coverage spans the whole foundation: 32 Graduated, 38 Incubating, and 151 Sandbox projects.

Maintainer coverage:

  • 2,322 maintainer entries are currently listed across all .project/maintainers.yaml files (2,198 unique people), up from 1,708 last month.
  • 1,908 (82.2%) are matched to an LF profile in OpenProfile with their GitHub handle connected - these get automatic access to the CNCF service desk and mailing lists.
  • 414 (17.8%) are not yet linked - either they don't have an OpenProfile account, or their profile doesn't have the GitHub handle listed in .project/maintainers.yaml connected. These maintainers miss out on automated access until they sign in to OpenProfile and connect their GitHub account.

For maintainers, this update reduces access-management overhead and helps projects keep their roster and access boundaries aligned with the people who actually maintain the project.

Maintainer checklist:

  • Confirm your GitHub handle is connected in your project's .project/maintainers.yaml
  • Review whether a scoped servicedesk team is a better fit than broad access
  • Verify your OpenProfile data is current so downstream automation remains accurate

New: scoping service desk access to a smaller team​

By default, every maintainer in your .project/maintainers.yaml gets CNCF Service Desk access. For larger projects, that's often more people than you want in a support channel with CNCF staff.

You can now scope it. Add a servicedesk team to your maintainers.yaml alongside your maintainers team, and list only the handles who should have Service Desk access:

teams:
  - name: maintainers
    members:
      - alice
      - bob
      - carol
  - name: servicedesk
    members:
      - alice
      - bob

How it behaves:

  • No servicedesk team → all maintainers keep Service Desk access. Nothing changes for you.
  • servicedesk team present → only the listed handles get access.
  • A handle must appear in both teams - someone listed only under servicedesk is ignored, since Service Desk access is a maintainer entitlement.
  • The team name is flexible: servicedesk, service-desk, and service_desk all work.
  • If the team is present but resolves to nobody, access stays unchanged rather than being revoked - a typo can't lock your project out.

OpenTelemetry is the first project using this, scoping Service Desk access from 161 maintainers down to a 19-person team.

Note: this affects Service Desk only. Mailing list membership still follows the full maintainer roster.

How maintainers can help right now:

  1. Sign in to OpenProfile and confirm your profile info is up to date.
  2. Connect the GitHub account that's listed for you in your project's .project/maintainers.yaml.
  3. Make sure the primary email on your profile is current - CNCF automation uses it for mailing-list and service-desk provisioning.
  4. If your project has an open .project PR from CNCF staff, please review and merge - it aligns the roster with your MAINTAINERS file.
  5. Consider whether a scoped servicedesk team makes sense for your project.

For technical background, see Introducing .project for maintainers.

New GitHub Features for Handling Low-Quality or Spam Contributions​

These updates are aimed at reducing maintainer burden when projects receive repetitive spam, low-quality submissions, or blocked-user activity that would otherwise require manual cleanup.

Close all open contributions from blocked users​

When blocking a user, you can now automatically close or remove all of their issues, pull requests, and discussions. This eliminates the need for manual cleanup, making it much easier to handle spam comments and slop PRs.

Block users directly from security advisories​

You can now block a user directly from the security advisories page. This update streamlines moderation and makes it much easier to handle repetitive spam submissions.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2026 and other Event CFPs, Scholarships, and Travel Funding Deadlines​

Check out this separate blog with deadlines, project benefits, and communications for maintainers.

Maintainer Summit NA

Register for the Maintainer Summit today!

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

LFX MCP is Now Available to the Community - Connect Your AI Assistant to LFX Self Serve​

If you use Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Goose, or another AI assistant, you can now connect it directly to LFX Self Serve through the new LFX MCP Server. Once connected with your own LFID, your assistant can work on your behalf across projects, groups, meetings, and membership - anything your role already lets you see and do in LFX.

For projects and maintainers, this can reduce repetitive admin work across meetings, groups, and project operations while keeping access aligned with the permissions you already have in LFX.

To get access open an issue on the lfx-mcp repo using the LFX MCP access request form, and we'll confirm once it's set up.

Full setup steps for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and other clients are in the community access guide. We'd love for you to give it a try and tell us what you think!

Please Complete the 2H 2026 Maintainer Survey​

We're entering the final quarter 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