Confluent Platform 7.5 Release Notes

7.5 is a major release of Confluent Platform that provides you with Apache Kafka® 3.5, the latest stable version of Kafka.

The technical details of this release are summarized below.

For more information about the 7.5 release, check out the release blog.

Kafka brokers

Confluent Server

Cluster Linking has several new options:

  • Bidirectional mode for newly created cluster links. This can sync data in metadata in either direction between 2 clusters. The consumer offset sync enabled by this mode is crucial when using Cluster Linking for disaster recovery.
  • The ability to start mirror topic replication from the latest message, or from any timestamp in the log.
  • The ability to have mirror topics set a different retention period than their source topic. To learn more, see Override default syncing to specify independent mirror topic behavior.

Confluent Community / Kafka

Confluent Platform 7.5 features Kafka 3.5. For a full list of the KIPs, features, and bug fixes, see the Apache Kafka release notes. For a summary of the improvements and changes in version 3.4, see Kafka 3.5 New Features and Updates on the Confluent blog, or the Kafka 3.5 release video that follows.

  • This release marks ZooKeeper as deprecated for Confluent Platform for new deployments. Confluent recommends KRaft mode for new deployments. A full KRaft timeline can be found in KIP-833.

  • In Confluent Platform 7.5, improvements to KRaft mode have been made to further improve parity with ZooKeeper mode.

    • Support for Multi-region clusters (new clusters only)
    • SASL SCRAM support
    • RBAC in KRaft combined mode (Note that combined mode is still not supported for production workloads)

  • There are some features that are currently supported in ZooKeeper mode that are not yet supported in KRaft mode in Confluent Platform 7.5:

    • JBOD
    • Delegate Tokens
    • Quorum reconfiguration
    • TopicAclAuthorizer for Schema Registry

  • ZooKeeper to KRaft migrations for existing clusters is still Early Access in Confluent Platform 7.5, with the following exceptions:

    • Clusters with features that are currently not supported in KRaft mode.
    • You cannot migrate clusters with authorization that uses centralized ACLs.
    • Self-Balancing can’t be used while in ZooKeeper migration.

    For more information about migrating from ZooKeeper to KRaft, see Migrate from ZooKeeper to KRaft (EA). For more information on current limitations of KRaft mode, see Limitations and known issues.

Confluent Control Center (Legacy)

Single Sign-On (SSO) support for Control Center was added. You can now:

  • Implement Single Sign-On using any identity provider that supports industry standard Open ID Connect (OIDC)
  • Leverage additional security controls such as MFA through your identity provider.
  • Provide seamless and secure SSO experience for users accessing Confluent Control Center (Legacy).
  • Automate the setup through either Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform or Confluent for Kubernetes for ease and convenience.

For more information, see Single Sign-On (SSO) for Confluent Control Center (Legacy).

Cluster Management

Confluent for Kubernetes (formerly Confluent Operator)

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue when REST Proxy starts faster than brokers and fails.

For the list of Confluent for Kubernetes release versions compatible with this release of Confluent Platform, see Confluent for Kubernetes. See the Confluent for Kubernetes Release Notes for more details.

Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform

New features

  • FIPS compliance for RHEL 8 and RHEL 9.
  • Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform playbooks to enable Confluent Control Center (Legacy) SSO.

For more information, see the Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform documentation.

Other improvements and changes

Starting October 1st, 2025, a new Enterprise license key for Customer-managed Confluent Platform for Confluent Cloud subscription is being introduced. This new license key entitles you to use self-managed Confluent Platform components exclusively with Confluent Cloud services.

Prerequisites for installing the license key

  1. Ensure all your self-managed components are connected with Confluent Cloud and used for Confluent Cloud broker-related use cases. Confluent does not provide support for any self-managed Confluent Platform components that are used exclusively for Confluent Platform broker use cases under the Customer-managed Confluent Platform for Confluent Cloud subscription.
  2. You must upgrade Confluent Platform to the recommended minimum patch version for each minor version of Confluent Platform.

Warning

Applying this new Enterprise license key to Confluent Platform components or Control Center before upgrading them causes the license key update to fail. The failure is recorded as an error in the component logs, and it is shown on the Control Center if the license key was applied using Control Center.

If you are an existing customer, your existing license key will continue to function until its expiration date.

Note the following for Customer-managed Confluent Platform for Confluent Cloud:

  • This license key is solely for the use of self-managed Confluent Platform components with Confluent Cloud. Confluent does not provide support for any self-managed Confluent Platform components that are used exclusively for Confluent Platform broker use cases under the Customer-managed Confluent Platform for Confluent Cloud subscription.
  • If you are using Control Center, apply the license key in Control Center (recommended). For more information, see Manage Confluent Platform Licenses using Control Center. Alternatively, you can configure the confluent.license parameter in the Connect worker configuration, or at the individual connector level for enterprise support. Enterprise support is not provided for Schema Registry and REST Proxy unless the confluent-security package is installed on all nodes and a valid Enterprise license key is configured. For more information, see Configure component licenses for more details.

Note

Confluent Platform Connect workers now perform a pre-check during startup to validate critical Confluent licensing libraries. This prevents potential runtime errors by ensuring all required libraries are present and compatible. If this check fails due to missing or incompatible libraries, the worker will not start. To avoid related library conflicts, use the plugin.path configuration property to load connectors and their dependencies. Avoid using the CLASSPATH environment variable for plugins, as this can lead to unpredictable failures in the Connect framework as described in the Install a plugin.

How to download

Confluent Platform is available for download at https://confluent.io/download/. See the Install Confluent Platform On-Premises section for detailed information.

Important

The Confluent Platform package includes Confluent Server by default and requires a confluent.license key in your server.properties file. Starting with Confluent Platform 5.4.x, the Confluent Server broker checks for a license during start-up. You must supply a license string in each broker’s properties file using the confluent.license property as below:

confluent.license=LICENCE_STRING_HERE_NO_QUOTES

If you want to use the Kafka broker, download the confluent-community package. The Kafka broker is the default in all Debian or RHEL and CentOS packages.

For more information about migrating to Confluent Server, see Migrate Confluent Platform to Confluent Server.

To upgrade Confluent Platform to a newer version, check the Upgrade Confluent Platform documentation.

Supported versions and interoperability

As of Confluent Platform 7.4, Confluent Platform now supports RHEL 9.

For the full list of supported versions and interoperability of Confluent Platform and its components, see Supported Versions and Interoperability for Confluent Platform.

Confluent CLI

Confluent Platform 7.5 ships with Confluent CLI version 3.2.1. To install and use a later version of the CLI, you must download and install an alternative CLI version using these instructions.

Questions?

If you have questions regarding this release, feel free to reach out via the community mailing list or community Slack. Confluent customers are encouraged to contact our support directly.