Kubernetes Versions Explained: A Practical Guide

Running Kubernetes across multiple cloud providers adds complexity to version management. Each managed service—EKS (AWS), GKE (Google Cloud), and AKS (Azure)—follows its own support lifecycle. For example, EKS offers around 26 months of support (with optional extended coverage), while AKS typically supports versions for about a year. These differences mean teams must track end-of-life dates carefully and plan upgrades on different schedules.

In this guide, we’ll compare the version policies of EKS, GKE, and AKS, then outline strategies to bring consistency to multi-cloud clusters through unified version management.

Key takeaways:

• Stay within the support window to avoid security risks: Kubernetes only provides security patches for the three most recent minor versions. Operating outside this window leaves your clusters exposed to known vulnerabilities and without community support for critical bug fixes.
• Respect version skew and audit APIs before upgrading: A stable cluster requires strict adherence to the Kubernetes Version Skew Policy for component compatibility. Before any update, you must also audit your workloads for deprecated APIs to prevent breaking changes from causing deployment failures.
• Use a centralized platform to automate fleet-wide updates: Managing versions manually across numerous clusters is unsustainable. A unified platform like Plural uses GitOps to enforce consistency, automate rollouts, and provide a single dashboard for monitoring health, turning complex upgrades into a repeatable, low-risk process.

What Do Kubernetes Version Numbers Mean?

To manage Kubernetes effectively, you need to understand its versioning scheme. Kubernetes follows semantic versioning (x.y.z), where each number conveys the type of change. For example, 1.29.2 indicates a major, minor, and patch level. This format helps teams anticipate the impact of an upgrade—from small fixes to new features—and plan updates with confidence.

Major, Minor, and Patch Versions

• Major (x): Rare, breaking API changes. Moving from 1.x to 2.x would represent a fundamental platform shift.
• Minor (y): New features and enhancements, designed to be backward-compatible (e.g., 1.28 → 1.29).
• Patch (z): Backward-compatible bug and security fixes. A patch bump (e.g., 1.29.1 → 1.29.2) is low risk.

Release Cadence

Kubernetes typically delivers three minor releases per year. This steady pace means new features and fixes arrive quickly, but it also forces teams to stay on a regular upgrade schedule. Falling behind even a few versions can lead to missed security patches and unsupported clusters. Automated upgrades are key to maintaining reliability at scale.

Naming Conventions

Standard releases follow x.y.z. Pre-release builds (e.g., v1.30.0-alpha.1, beta) are for testing and should not be used in production. For workloads in production, always stick to the latest stable patch of a supported minor version.

What Is the Kubernetes Support Lifecycle?

Kubernetes ships on a fast, predictable release schedule, and its support lifecycle directly shapes how you manage clusters. Only a limited number of recent versions receive community support, including bug fixes and security patches. Falling behind means running workloads on unpatched, unstable software—a serious operational risk. For platform teams, tracking release timelines and planning upgrades is not optional; it’s essential to keeping clusters secure and compliant.

Active Support Windows

The community supports the three most recent minor releases. When a new version ships (e.g., 1.31), the oldest supported one (e.g., 1.28) is dropped. Only these three versions receive patch updates for bugs and vulnerabilities, ensuring engineering effort is focused on secure, modern releases.

End-of-Life Policies

Once a version leaves the support window, it becomes End-of-Life (EOL)—usually about one year after its release. EOL versions no longer receive patches, leaving clusters exposed to new CVEs and instabilities. To avoid this risk, platform teams must have a process to migrate workloads and retire EOL clusters before support ends.

Security Updates and Patches

Patch releases (e.g., 1.30.1) provide backward-compatible fixes for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities. They are issued only for supported minor versions and should be applied promptly. Staying current on patches is one of the most effective ways to protect clusters from known exploits.

The Deprecation Process

Deprecation is gradual in Kubernetes. Features or APIs are marked as deprecated across several releases before removal, giving teams time to adjust manifests and tooling. While some cloud providers (e.g., EKS) offer extended support, aligning your upgrade cycle with upstream Kubernetes is the safest way to ensure compatibility and security.

How to Manage Version Compatibility

Kubernetes components must run within specific version ranges to ensure stability and security. If versions drift too far apart, clusters risk API errors, workload failures, or vulnerabilities. Managing compatibility is therefore a core part of upgrade planning, especially in large fleets where inconsistencies can creep in.

Control Plane Components

The kube-apiserver sets the baseline.

• Multiple kube-apiserver instances must be within one minor version of each other.
• The controller manager and scheduler cannot be newer than the kube-apiserver, but they can be one minor version older.
  Example: if the kube-apiserver is on 1.30, the controller manager can run 1.29 or 1.30, but not 1.31.

This tight alignment ensures consistent API interpretation and prevents state mismatches across the control plane.

Node Version Requirements

Worker nodes have a wider tolerance:

• The kubelet must never be newer than the kube-apiserver.
• It can be up to three minor versions older.

This flexibility allows teams to upgrade the control plane first without immediately upgrading every node. However, once nodes fall three versions behind, further control plane upgrades are blocked until the nodes are updated. Tracking kubelet versions is essential for upgrade planning.

API Version Compatibility

Minor releases may deprecate APIs that are removed in later versions. For example, manifests using apps/v1beta1 will fail once that API is dropped. Since only the three most recent minor releases are supported, older API versions can disappear quickly. Proactively auditing manifests and dependencies for deprecated APIs avoids upgrade failures.

The Version Skew Policy

Kubernetes publishes an official Version Skew Policy, which formalizes:

• Compatibility rules between the control plane and kubelets.
• The rolling support window of the three most recent minor releases (~1 year of patches).

Following this policy ensures clusters remain within supported, patchable configurations and prevents running into unsupported combinations.

Feature Gates and API Changes

New features often ship behind feature gates, which let admins enable or disable experimental functionality. As features mature, their defaults can change, affecting cluster behavior after upgrades. Reviewing release notes before upgrading is critical—they highlight new defaults, deprecated APIs, and removed functionality. Skipping this step is a common cause of post-upgrade issues.

Common Challenges in Version Management

Managing Kubernetes versions across many clusters introduces significant operational overhead. Without a deliberate strategy, environments can quickly become fragile and insecure. Teams often struggle to balance adopting new features with maintaining stability. Even a minor upgrade can trigger cascading updates to tooling, add-ons, and manifests. At scale, this manual effort leads to configuration drift and forces teams into a reactive mode, upgrading only when vulnerabilities are announced instead of maintaining clusters proactively.

Security Implications

Running outdated Kubernetes versions exposes clusters to unpatched CVEs. Each release includes security fixes, so falling behind creates immediate risks. In multi-cluster environments, managing RBAC policies consistently across mixed versions is also challenging, as APIs and permissions can change. This drift weakens security posture. Plural helps by allowing you to define and enforce RBAC policies globally, ensuring a consistent baseline across all clusters regardless of their Kubernetes version.

Compatibility Issues

Upgrading the control plane can break compatibility with add-ons like CNI plugins, CSI drivers, ingress controllers, or service meshes. A seemingly simple version bump may trigger failures if dependencies are not aligned. Tracking these dependencies manually across clusters is inefficient and error-prone. Plural’s application marketplace and GitOps-based deployment model ensure applications and dependencies are versioned and tested together, reducing the risk of upgrade-related failures.

Performance Impact

Each Kubernetes release may shift the performance profile of components like the API server, scheduler, or kubelet. While upgrades can deliver improvements, they may also increase CPU or memory consumption or reveal regressions. Without testing and monitoring, teams risk unexpected latency or contention post-upgrade. Plural’s integrated dashboard lets you monitor performance metrics before and after updates, helping you identify and resolve regressions across your fleet from a single interface.

Breaking Changes

Rapid Kubernetes development often introduces breaking changes. For example, the removal of PodSecurityPolicy in v1.25 required teams to migrate to Pod Security Admission. Identifying all uses of deprecated APIs across clusters and repositories is a heavy lift at scale. Plural’s self-service code generation and PR automation can automatically update manifests for new API versions, reducing manual effort and lowering the risk of failed upgrades.

Resource Requirements

Upgrades may change the resource requirements of core components. The API server, scheduler, and kubelet might demand more CPU or memory, directly impacting capacity planning and cloud costs. Ignoring these changes can lead to node starvation or instability. Plural provides a unified view of resource utilization across clusters, enabling you to track usage trends and plan capacity more accurately before and after upgrades.

How Cloud Providers Handle Version Support

Each cloud provider manages Kubernetes version lifecycles differently, which directly impacts how you plan upgrades and maintenance. For teams running multi-cloud environments, these variations can complicate fleet management. Support windows—ranging from community-only models to extended paid options—determine how long you’ll receive security patches and how much time you have to adopt new features.

AWS EKS

Amazon EKS provides:

• 14 months of standard support (security patches and bug fixes included).
• 12 months of extended support (paid), covering critical security updates.

This two-phase model offers 26 months total support per version, giving teams ample time to test, validate, and migrate workloads.

Google GKE

Google Kubernetes Engine provides:

• ~14 months of standard support, recommended for new clusters.
• 10 months of extended support, with ongoing security patches.

In total, GKE offers about 24 months of coverage per version, enabling organizations to adopt a more predictable annual upgrade cycle.

Azure AKS

Azure AKS aligns more closely with upstream Kubernetes:

• 1 year of community support per minor version.
• No extended support option—clusters must be upgraded to stay secure and supported.

This shorter window requires tighter upgrade discipline and faster adoption cycles compared to EKS or GKE.

Key Differences Between Providers

• EKS: 26 months total (14 + 12 extended, paid).
• GKE: 24 months total (14 + 10 extended).
• AKS: 12 months total (community only).

For teams managing clusters across providers, these differences create operational overhead. Tracking end-of-life dates and coordinating upgrades across clouds can be complex. Plural helps by providing a single pane of glass for fleet-wide version management. With Plural, you can monitor supported versions across EKS, GKE, and AKS, and automate upgrade workflows to keep your entire fleet secure and compliant.

Best Practices for Kubernetes Updates

Updating Kubernetes clusters is a critical operational task that demands planning and execution to minimize downtime. A structured update process reduces risk, keeps clusters secure, and ensures compatibility with evolving APIs and tooling. Without a clear strategy, teams risk outages from breaking API changes, tooling incompatibilities, or exposure to unpatched vulnerabilities.

Updates should be treated as a repeatable, automated workflow rather than a one-off task. The key phases include: planning for impact, testing in non-production, executing updates with a clear strategy, preparing a rollback plan, and verifying workloads after completion. Following these steps is especially important for organizations running large, heterogeneous fleets of clusters.

Plan Before You Update

Start with the official Kubernetes release notes for your target version. Look for deprecated APIs, removed features, and breaking changes. Identify workloads that rely on deprecated functionality and update manifests in advance. For larger fleets, manual tracking is impractical—centralized auditing tools or management platforms provide visibility into API usage and help catch conflicts early.

Test and Validate Thoroughly

Never upgrade production clusters without prior validation. Use staging or canary clusters that mirror production to test application compatibility, run integration tests, and monitor performance. Beyond release notes, hands-on validation uncovers regressions in workloads, controllers, or operators that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Choose an Update Strategy

Select an update strategy based on risk tolerance and infrastructure design. Rolling updates—incrementally upgrading control plane and worker nodes—are a common approach that preserves availability. Managed services like EKS or AKS often support both stable and beta features, so review which ones should be enabled during the update. Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools allows you to define update policies declaratively, ensuring consistent execution across clusters.

Prepare a Rollback Plan

Even well-tested updates can fail. Have a rollback procedure defined before starting. This includes reverting the control plane, but also restoring workloads and data to a stable state. A GitOps workflow simplifies this process: since cluster configurations are version-controlled, rolling back can be as simple as reverting a commit and allowing your CD system to reconcile the state.

Verify After the Update

After upgrading, confirm that the cluster and workloads are fully functional. Monitor control plane health, node status, and application performance. Review logs for anomalies and validate service responsiveness. Keep track of API deprecations and Kubernetes End-of-Life timelines to avoid reintroducing risks. Centralized monitoring platforms can help provide a unified view across multiple clusters.

How Plural Streamlines Version Management

Managing Kubernetes versions is a continuous process that requires careful planning, automation, and visibility. Without the right tools, teams can easily fall behind on updates, exposing their environments to security risks and compatibility issues. Plural provides a unified platform designed to address the complexities of version management at scale, turning a high-risk, manual effort into a streamlined, automated workflow. By integrating GitOps principles, powerful orchestration, and deep observability, Plural helps you keep your entire Kubernetes fleet secure, stable, and up-to-date. It provides a consistent workflow for managing your clusters, whether you're updating a single application or rolling out a new Kubernetes version across hundreds of nodes.

Automate Version Control

Effective version management starts with treating your cluster configurations as code. Plural fully embraces this with a GitOps-centric approach. Using Plural Stacks, you can declaratively manage your infrastructure and application versions in Git. Every change, from a simple application update to a control plane upgrade, is captured in a commit. This creates an auditable, version-controlled history of your entire environment. Plural’s pull request automation further streamlines this process by generating the necessary IaC configurations from predefined templates, ensuring that every change is consistent, reviewed, and compliant with your organization's standards before it’s ever merged. This eliminates manual configuration drift and makes rollbacks as simple as reverting a commit.

Orchestrate Updates Seamlessly

Coordinating updates across multiple clusters can be a logistical nightmare. Plural CD simplifies this with a scalable, agent-based architecture that orchestrates deployments without requiring direct network access to your clusters. You can define update strategies and roll them out progressively across your fleet from a single control plane. The Plural deployment operator detects changes in your Git repositories and automatically applies them to the targeted clusters. This ensures that updates are applied consistently everywhere, reducing the risk of human error. By standardizing procedures and automating rollouts, you can manage your Kubernetes clusters effectively and ensure reliable operations, even at a massive scale.

Monitor for Compatibility Issues

One of the biggest risks during an update is introducing unforeseen compatibility issues. Plural’s embedded Kubernetes dashboard provides a single pane of glass to monitor the health and performance of your clusters before, during, and after an update. You can track resource utilization, inspect pod statuses, and review logs in real-time to quickly identify problems like API deprecation errors or resource throttling. This deep visibility helps you catch breaking changes and performance regressions early, preventing them from escalating into major incidents. Without proper monitoring, Kubernetes environments can quickly become a source of "operational fragility, and security vulnerabilities," but Plural gives you the tools to maintain stability.

Manage Versions Across Your Entire Fleet

As your organization grows, so does the complexity of managing versions across a diverse fleet of clusters. The challenges of using Kubernetes at scale become more pronounced, especially when dealing with clusters in different clouds or on-premise data centers. Plural is built for this reality. Its agent-based architecture allows you to securely manage any cluster from a central management plane, regardless of its location. You can use Global Services to enforce version policies, sync RBAC configurations, and deploy common services across your entire fleet. This ensures that all your clusters adhere to the same standards, simplifying governance and reducing the operational overhead of large-scale version management.

Simplify Complex Upgrade Workflows

Plural transforms complex upgrade workflows into simple, repeatable processes. By combining PR automation, GitOps, and a centralized dashboard, Plural abstracts away the underlying complexity of Kubernetes updates. Platform teams can create self-service templates that allow developers to provision resources and update applications safely, without needing deep Kubernetes expertise. This approach aligns with the strategic goal of mastering foundational disciplines to unlock the full potential of cloud-native technologies. By removing manual bottlenecks and providing guardrails, Plural empowers your teams to move faster while ensuring your infrastructure remains secure and stable.

Related Articles

• What Is the Current Kubernetes Version? (2025 Guide)
• Managing Kubernetes Deployments: A Comprehensive Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should my team be planning for Kubernetes upgrades? A good rule of thumb is to plan for at least one significant minor version upgrade per year. The Kubernetes project releases a new minor version roughly every four months and only provides active support, including security patches, for the three most recent versions. This means a version typically becomes unsupported about a year after its release. Sticking to a regular, proactive upgrade schedule keeps you within this support window and prevents the need to rush a multi-version jump when a critical vulnerability is announced.

What's the most common mistake teams make when upgrading a cluster? The most frequent and disruptive mistake is failing to check for deprecated APIs before starting an upgrade. Teams often assume their existing application manifests will work on the new version, but a deprecated API that was removed can cause deployments to fail completely. Always read the release notes for your target version and audit your workloads for any APIs that are being removed. This simple planning step can prevent a lot of post-upgrade firefighting.

My company uses multiple cloud providers. Does this make version management harder? Yes, operating across different clouds adds significant complexity. Each provider has a unique support timeline. For instance, AWS EKS and Google GKE offer longer support windows with paid extended options, while Azure AKS has a stricter one-year cycle. Manually tracking these different end-of-life dates for each cluster is difficult and error-prone. A platform like Plural is essential here, as it provides a single dashboard to monitor the version status and health of your entire fleet, regardless of which cloud provider it runs on.

Why is the version skew policy so strict about nodes being older than the control plane? The version skew policy is all about ensuring stable and predictable communication within the cluster. The API server in the control plane is the definitive source of truth. If a kubelet on a worker node were newer than the API server, it might try to use features or send requests that the older control plane simply doesn't understand, leading to unexpected behavior and errors. By ensuring nodes are never newer than the control plane, Kubernetes guarantees that all components are speaking a language the control plane can process correctly.

How does Plural help prevent a bad upgrade from taking down production? Plural provides several safeguards to de-risk the upgrade process. First, its GitOps-based workflow ensures every configuration change is version-controlled and peer-reviewed through a pull request before being applied. If an upgrade causes issues, you can roll back to a known-good state by simply reverting a commit. Second, Plural's centralized dashboard gives you real-time visibility across your fleet, allowing you to monitor performance and spot anomalies during a rollout. This combination of a repeatable, auditable process and deep observability helps you catch problems long before they impact production.