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.
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.
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.
