Releases

KubeVirt v1.8.4 is a patch release fixing a gRPC connection leak in virt-handler that caused memory growth, patching CVE-2026-35469 in spdystream, and adding missing metrics/alerts.

• securityPatch CVE-2026-35469 by upgrading to v1.8.4

  The moby/spdystream dependency carried CVE-2026-35469 (GHSA-pc3f-x583-g7j2). If you're on any v1.8.x release before v1.8.4, upgrade now. Check your internal scanner results for this CVE to confirm exposure before and after the upgrade.

• breakinggRPC connection leak fix may change virt-handler resource footprint

  The connection leak in GetLauncherClient caused unbounded memory and goroutine growth when multiple controllers raced on the same VMI. After upgrading, virt-handler memory usage should drop noticeably in clusters with high VMI churn. If you have memory-based alerts or resource limits tuned to the leaked baseline, revisit those thresholds post-upgrade.

• enhancementNew metrics and alerts for virt components — update dashboards

  Missing metrics, recording rules, and alerts were added for virt components. Review what's new against your existing Prometheus/Alertmanager setup and add any new alerts to your runbooks. This is a good time to audit alert coverage gaps you may have been living with.

KubeVirt v1.8.3 is a patch release with 75 fixes targeting security, authorization, live migration stability, and GPU/DRA device handling — all worth deploying promptly.

• securityPatch CVE and symlink traversal — upgrade now

  Two security issues demand attention: a gRPC CVE (GHSA-p77j-4mvh-x3m3) and a symlink traversal in the VMExport dir handler. Both are fixed in this release. If you use VMExport or expose VM data externally, treat this upgrade as urgent. Verify no malicious symlinks exist in existing VMExport directories before and after upgrading.

• breakingRecording rule renames — update dashboards and alerts before upgrading

  kubevirt_vm_created_total and kubevirt_vm_created_by_pod_total are deprecated outright, and multiple other recording rules are being renamed for naming convention compliance. If your Grafana dashboards, alerting rules, or SLO queries reference these metrics, they will silently stop matching after upgrade. Audit your observability stack now and migrate to the new names before rolling this out to production.

• enhancementLive migration is more reliable — especially on IPv6 and cross-namespace setups

  Several live migration bugs are resolved here: cross-namespace migration on IPv6 clusters now works, duplicate kubevirt_vmi_info series no longer break VirtualMachineStuckOnNode and VMCannotBeEvicted alerts, and GuestAgentPing probes no longer cause spurious pod restarts during migration. If you've been avoiding live migration in IPv6 or multi-namespace environments due to instability, this release clears those blockers.

KubeVirt v1.7.4 is a patch release fixing a CVE in gRPC, authorization bugs, live migration on IPv6, and probe-triggered pod restarts during VM lifecycle events.

• securityPatch CVE-2026-33186 by upgrading to v1.7.4 now

  The gRPC dependency was vulnerable to CVE-2026-33186. This is a direct dependency bump to 1.79.3, so upgrading your KubeVirt installation to v1.7.4 is the only required action — no configuration changes needed. Prioritize this if your cluster runs workloads exposed to untrusted input over gRPC.

• breakingAudit authorization if you use VNC, SEV, or evacuate subresources

  The SubjectAccessReview truncation bug meant RBAC checks were being evaluated against incorrect subresource names — which could have allowed access that should have been denied, or denied access that should have been allowed. After upgrading, verify that your RBAC policies for vnc/screenshot, sev/*, and evacuate/cancel subresources behave as intended. This is not just a security fix; it's a correctness fix for authorization logic.

• enhancementVMs using GuestAgentPing probes during migrations or pauses should no longer bounce

  If you've been seeing unexpected virt-launcher pod restarts during live migrations or VM pause operations, this was a known probe behavior issue. The fix suppresses false-positive probe failures during pre-copy target, post-copy source, user pause, snapshot, save, and dump states. No action required — just upgrade. If you had workarounds in place (e.g., disabling GuestAgentPing during migrations), you can now remove them.

KubeVirt v1.6.6 is a patch release fixing 9 notable bugs including a CVE remediation, authorization bypass in virt-api, and broken cross-namespace live migration on IPv6 clusters.

• securityPatch CVE-2026-33186 by upgrading to v1.6.6

  The grpc dependency was bumped to remediate CVE-2026-33186. If your KubeVirt deployment exposes gRPC endpoints or you're running in a multi-tenant cluster, this is the main reason to push this upgrade now. Check your current version and plan the rollout — this is a patch release so the upgrade path should be straightforward.

• securityFix incorrect SubjectAccessReview checks in virt-api — audit your RBAC

  virt-api was constructing SubjectAccessReviews with truncated subresource names for deep paths like vnc/screenshot and sev/*. This means authorization checks were running against wrong resource names, potentially allowing or denying access incorrectly. After upgrading, audit any RBAC policies that restrict access to VNC, SEV, or evacuation subresources to confirm they behave as intended.

• breakingIPv6 clusters: cross-namespace live migration was silently broken — verify after upgrade

  If you're running KubeVirt on an IPv6 cluster and rely on cross-namespace live migrations, those migrations were failing. This fix restores the expected behavior. After upgrading, run a test migration across namespaces in your IPv6 environment to confirm the fix holds before relying on it in production workflows.

• enhancementPCI hostdev users on mixed machine types: restart reliability improved

  VMs using PCI passthrough hostdevices were failing to restart after hotplugging a block volume. The root cause was PCI topology being gated only on architecture, not machine type. If you manage VMs with PCI hostdevices and have seen unexplained restart failures post-hotplug, this patch resolves it — no config change needed, just the upgrade.

KubeVirt v1.7.3 is a focused patch release fixing 11 bugs across live migration, ARM64/s390x guest support, VMExport, and virt-handler stability.

• breakingBackend storage volume name has changed — check existing VMs

  VMs using backend storage volumes will now report the volume name as 'persistent-state-for-this-vm' instead of a name derived from the VM name. If you have monitoring, automation, or tooling that references the old volume name pattern, update those references before upgrading. Verify existing VMs with backend storage in your environment to understand impact before rolling out v1.7.3.

• enhancementUpgrade if you run ARM64 or s390x guests, or use decentralized live migration

  Three targeted fixes land for non-x86 architectures: ARM64 SMBIOS visibility and s390x PCIe controller errors are both resolved. Separately, decentralized live migration now correctly reports success and supports Windows VMs requiring Hyper-V enlightenments. If any of these scenarios apply to your cluster, this patch is worth prioritizing over staying on v1.7.2.

• enhancementvirt-handler socket recovery is now automatic — no more manual pod restarts

  Two separate fixes address domain-notify server crashes and socket deletion. Previously, a deleted or crashed notify socket would leave virt-handler in a broken state requiring manual intervention. After upgrading, this recovers automatically. If you've been seeing unexplained VM communication failures on nodes, this is likely the culprit.

KubeVirt v1.6.5 is a patch release with 61 fixes targeting decentralized live migration reliability, virt-handler stability, and monitoring accuracy.

• breakingBackend storage volume rename may affect existing tooling

  VMs using backend storage volumes will now report the volume name as 'persistent-state-for-this-vm' rather than a name derived from the VM name. If you have scripts, dashboards, or alerts that reference the old volume naming pattern, update them before upgrading. Check if any PVC-based tooling depends on that name convention.

• enhancementUpgrade if you rely on decentralized live migration

  Three separate bugs in decentralized live migration are fixed here: cross-volumeMode failures, broken migration for enlightened (Hyper-V) VMs, and incorrect 'succeeded' status reporting after compute migration. If your cluster runs Windows VMs or mixes volume modes, this patch directly unblocks those scenarios. Prioritize this upgrade over staying on v1.6.4.

• enhancementMonitoring alert baselines are now more accurate

  The low-count alert for KubeVirt components now fires based on the configured replica count in the deployment, not a hardcoded value. Non-schedulable nodes are also excluded from kubevirt_allocatable_nodes. Review your existing alert thresholds after upgrading — alerts may behave differently if your environment has non-schedulable nodes or custom replica counts.

KubeVirt v1.8.2 is a patch release with 12 bug fixes covering hotplug volumes, live migration, TLS config, qcow2 disk handling, and multi-arch VM stability.

• breakingBackend storage volume naming changed — check for impacts

  VMs using backend storage volumes will now report the volume name as 'persistent-state-for-this-vm' instead of a name derived from the VM name. If you have monitoring alerts, scripts, or tooling that match on the old volume name pattern, they will silently break. Audit any automation that references backend storage volume names before upgrading.

• enhancementUpgrade s390x and ARM64 clusters — arch-specific VM failures resolved

  Two separate fixes land here: ARM64 guests now correctly expose SMBIOS system info, and s390x VMs failing to create due to unsupported PCIe root-port controllers from the v3 PCI topology change are fixed. If you're running multi-arch clusters and held back on v1.8.x due to these issues, v1.8.2 is the version to move to.

• enhancementTLS config from KubeVirt CR now respected by sync-controller and virt-exportserver

  Previously, the sync-controller healthz server and virt-exportserver ignored the TLSConfiguration set in the KubeVirt CR, potentially using weaker defaults. After upgrading, verify your KubeVirt CR TLS settings are correct — they'll actually take effect now. This matters most for clusters with strict cipher or TLS version requirements.

KubeVirt v1.8.1 is a small patch release fixing two specific bugs: virt-handler domain-notify server crashes and VMExport failures with long PVC names.

• breakingUpgrade if virt-handler crashes are disrupting VM lifecycle events

  The domain-notify server handles communication between virt-handler and running VMs. If it exits unexpectedly without restarting, VMs can become unresponsive to lifecycle operations (start, stop, migrate) without obvious errors. If you've seen unexplained VM management failures after a virt-handler pod restart, this is your fix. Patch as soon as possible on v1.8.0 clusters.

• enhancementVMExport now works reliably with long PVC names — review your naming conventions

  If you use VMExport for backup or migration workflows and your PVCs follow long naming patterns (common with dynamic provisioners or namespace-prefixed names), test VMExport after upgrading. The prior failure was silent enough to cause confusion — confirm your export pipelines are functional post-upgrade.

KubeVirt v1.8.0 is a large release (1242 changes, 77 contributors) adding a new VM backup API, VMPool auto-healing, containerpath volumes, and multiple network/storage improvements with several breaking removals.

• breakingRemove SLIRP and Macvtap network bindings before upgrading

  Both core SLIRP and Macvtap bindings are completely removed in v1.8.0. If any VMs in your cluster use these bindings, they will break post-upgrade. Audit your VM specs now with a label/annotation query, migrate affected VMs to passt or bridge bindings, and validate in a non-prod environment before rolling this to production.

• breakingUpdate migration metrics in dashboards before upgrading

  kubevirt_vmi_migration_data_total_bytes is deprecated and will eventually be removed. If you have Grafana dashboards, Prometheus alerts, or recording rules referencing this metric, update them to kubevirt_vmi_migration_data_bytes_total now. Also note the vCPU recording rule rename from kubevirt_vmi_vcpu_count to vmi:kubevirt_vmi_vcpu:count — both need updating together.

• enhancementAdopt explicit feature gate disabling for tighter cluster governance

  You can now explicitly block feature gates via disabledFeatureGates in the KubeVirt config rather than relying on gates simply being absent. For clusters where you want to enforce that certain alpha/beta features stay off (e.g., in regulated environments), add them to the disabled list. This is particularly useful if you're managing KubeVirt configs via GitOps and want auditable gate enforcement.

KubeVirt v1.7.2 is a patch release fixing 7 bugs across networking, storage, monitoring, and backup — no new features, but several fixes that could unblock production issues.

• breakingCheck VMI specs if you're running mixed NIC configurations

  The infinite status loop fix targets VMIs where the primary network interface appears after a secondary one in the spec. If you have VMs stuck in update churn or virt-controller/virt-handler showing abnormal CPU/log volume, this is likely the cause. Upgrade to v1.7.2 and verify your VMI specs list the primary interface first to avoid re-triggering the issue on older clusters.

• enhancementWindows VM backup users should update for reliable Velero integration

  The QuiesceFailed-to-QuiesceTimeout change plus a 60s pre-backup hook timeout directly addresses flaky Windows VSS snapshot behavior during Velero backups. If you're backing up Windows VMs and seeing intermittent quiesce failures, this patch resolves it. Review your Velero backup policies to ensure the hook timeout aligns with your SLAs.

• enhancementGoogle Cloud NetApp Volumes storage migration is unblocked

  If you're running VMs on GCP with NetApp Volumes and tried live storage migration, it was silently failing. This patch fixes that. Test your migration workflows after upgrading — especially if you deferred any storage moves because of this bug.

KubeVirt v1.6.4 is a patch release with 108 changes targeting stability: a CVE fix in crypto, several hotplug/migration bugs squashed, and new vCPU queue alerting.

• securityPatch CVE-2025-47913 — upgrade to v1.6.4 now

  CVE-2025-47913 affects the golang/x/crypto dependency. This release pins it to OpenShift's patched fork. If you're running any v1.6.x release before v1.6.4, you're exposed. Upgrade immediately — no workaround exists short of patching the binary yourself.

• breakingCross-vendor live migrations are now blocked

  KubeVirt will now explicitly prevent live migrations between nodes with different CPU vendors (e.g., Intel to AMD). If your cluster has mixed CPU vendors and you've been relying on cross-vendor migration — intentionally or not — audit your node topology before upgrading. Migrations that previously succeeded may now fail with an error.

• enhancementAdd vCPU queue alerts to your monitoring setup

  Two new alerts ship in this release: GuestPeakVCPUQueueHighWarning and GuestPeakVCPUQueueHighCritical. If you're running KubeVirt with Prometheus, check that these alerts are picked up by your alerting rules. They give you early warning on guest CPU starvation, which is otherwise invisible until VMs start misbehaving under load.

KubeVirt v1.7.1 delivers critical bug fixes for live migration, volume hotplug, and VM snapshot operations, along with enhanced monitoring capabilities and security updates.

• securityUpdate to address crypto dependency vulnerabilities

  The golang.org/x/crypto dependency was updated to v0.45.0 to address security issues. Plan to upgrade to this version promptly, especially in production environments handling sensitive workloads, as crypto vulnerabilities can impact VM security.

• breakingCross-vendor migration prevention requires review

  KubeVirt now prevents cross-vendor migrations which may break existing workflows that rely on migrating VMs between different infrastructure providers. Review your migration patterns and ensure source and target nodes use compatible virtualization stacks.

• enhancementImplement ephemeral volume monitoring

  New metrics and alerts for ephemeral hotplug volumes improve operational visibility. Configure your monitoring stack to capture these new metrics and set up alerts for ephemeral volume lifecycle events to better track resource usage and potential issues.