Release Notes for Confluent Platform 7.8

7.8 is a major release of Confluent Platform that provides you with Apache Kafka® 3.8, the latest stable version of Kafka.

The technical details of this release are summarized below.

For more information about the 7.8 release, check out the release blog.

Kafka brokers

Confluent Server

Confluent Metadata Service (MDS) now supports authentication with mutual TLS certificates when role-based access control (RBAC) is enabled.

  • 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 7.8 features Kafka 3.8.

  • Change Notice: Effective with Confluent Platform 8.0, Confluent Platform, Community version will transition to follow the Kafka release cycle more closely. The Kafka community provides about one year of patch support for a Kafka version, from the minor version release date, and Confluent Community software will soon follow a similar support schedule. Confluent customers using Confluent Enterprise will continue to receive patch updates for three years following minor version release. For more details, see Confluent Platform and Apache Kafka compatibility.

In Confluent Platform 7.8, major features include:

KRaft mode enhancements:

Stability enhancements:

General enhancements:

For a full list of the KIPs, features, and bug fixes, see the Apache Kafka release notes, Kafka 3.8 New Features and Updates on the Confluent blog, or the Kafka 3.8 release video that follows.

Confluent Control Center (Legacy)

  • Added the capability to produce messages with an associated schema in Confluent Control Center (Legacy). For more information, see Produce new messages to topics.
  • Added topic message search improvements to Confluent Control Center (Legacy). You can use the message browser to view messages from all partitions, even if you are not actively producing to a given partition. For more information, see View Messages Using Control Center (Legacy) for Confluent Platform.
  • RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization for Confluent Control Center (Legacy) in Confluent Platform 7.8.

Clients

  • Official Confluent JavaScript Client for Kafka is now in General Availability. For more information, see JavaScript Client Overview.

  • A Javascript client for use with Schema Registry, OAuth and CSFLE is in early access.

  • Librdkafka and supported clients (Python/Go/.NET) version 2.6.0 release included the following updates:

    All clients:

    • KIP-460 Adds admin leader election RPC to the Admin client.
    • KIP-714 Adds complete consumer metrics support and produce latency average and maximum metrics support for non-Java clients for support parity with the Java client.
    • KIP-848 Provides early access to the ListConsumerGroups Admin API, which now has an optional filter to return only groups in a given state.
    • Made a fix for permanent fetch errors when using a newer Fetch RPC version with an older inter broker protocol.

    For more information on these KIPs and fixes, see Librdkafka release notes.

    Python client only:

    • Added support for Python 3.13 wheels.
    • Added Transactional ID resource type for ACL operations.

    For more information about the Python client, see Python Client.

    .NET client only:

    • .NET 8 support including the NJsonSchema 11 package.

    For more information about the .NET client, see .NET client.

Confluent Platform for Apache Flink

Confluent Platform for Apache Flink is now Generally Available.

This release adds Confluent Manager for Apache Flink to simplify deployment, application lifecycle management, RBAC and license management. For more information, see Confluent Platform for Apache Flink Overview, and What’s New.

To get started, see Get Started with Confluent Platform for Apache Flink.

Cluster Management

Confluent for Kubernetes (formerly Confluent Operator)

For Confluent for Kubernetes release notes, see Confluent for Kubernetes Release Notes.

Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform

For Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform release notes, see the Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform.

Confluent CLI

  • Confluent Platform 7.8 ships with Confluent CLI version 4.7.0. Confluent CLI version 4.x has many changes from version 3.x. For a list of changes, see Confluent CLI Release Notes.

Kafka Connect

  • RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization for Kafka Connect in Confluent Platform 7.8. For more information, see Use mTLS Authentication with RBAC Authorization in Confluent Platform.
  • The new support policy for self-managed connectors and connector versions in Confluent Platform is now generally available. The policy outlines the lifecycle phases for self-managed connectors and connector versions, including details on deprecated connectors, end of life (EOL) timeframes, minimum version of connectors required for support and migration recommendations by Confluent. To know more, see Support policy for self-managed connectors.

Schema Registry

Security

Starting with the Confluent Platform 7.8 release, RBAC can be enabled without requiring an identity provider by using mTLS identity for RBAC authorization. This is generally available now across all Confluent Platform services. It also includes support for mTLS authentication to the Confluent Metadata Service (MDS). For more information, see Use mTLS Authentication with RBAC Authorization in Confluent Platform.

Other improvements and changes

  • Confluent Platform 7.8, Confluent Platform adds support for Ubuntu 22.04 and Alma Linux 8 and 9. For more information, see Operating systems.
  • Confluent Platform docker images now use the Temurin JDK instead of Zulu JDK.

  • The compression libraries zstd-jni and snappy require execution permission for the /tmp folder. In Confluent Platform 7.8, if Kafka clusters are running without execution permission for the /tmp folder, Kafka may not start or fail when producing and consuming messages. A workaround is to set ZstdTempFolder and org.xerial.snappy.tempdir to folders with execution permission. using the KAFKA_OPTS environment variable. For example:

    export KAFKA_OPTS="-DZstdTempFolder=/opt/kafka/tmp -Dorg.xerial.snappy.tempdir=/opt/kafka/tmp"

  • 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.

Deprecation warnings

  • Effective with Confluent Platform 8.0, monitoring interceptors will be removed. This means that the “% message consumed” and “end-to-end latency” graphs in Confluent Control Center (Legacy) will no longer be available. Client configurations should be updated to disable these interceptors.
  • Confluent Platform 8.0 will remove support for older client protocol API versions. Specifically, client protocol API versions older than those supported by Apache Kafka 2.1 (released Nov 2018) will be removed. This aligns with Kafka KIP 896, which was implemented in Apache Kafka 3.7, and marked these older versions as deprecated. Any Java clients older than 2.1.0 are generally affected, and any Kafka client version released before 2021 are likely affected. For complete details on the specific client protocol API versions being removed, see KIP 896.

Supported versions and interoperability

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

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.

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.
  • To provide feedback on the Confluent documentation, click the Give us feedback button located near the footer of each page.