Nice RC4 passed with 3 binging votes and update the PR on Kafka-site with RC4
docs
Will merge the docs and promote RC4 as final release
Thanks everyone and sorry for taking long to get this release out there
Omnia
Sent from my iPhone
> On 8 Oct 2026, at 12:35, Luke Chen <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Omnia,
>
> Thanks for running this release.
>
> I did the following:
> - Run quickstart using the artifacts in java 17
> - Browsed the document
> - Browsed the java doc
> - Run quick start using JVM docker image
>
> +1 (binding) from me.
>
> Thank you,
> Luke
>
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2026 at 3:35 PM Chia-Ping Tsai <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> +1 (binding)
>>
>> Verified:
>> - signatures and sha512 of the src, binary and site-docs tarballs
>> - signatures of the maven staging artifacts (16 files across
>> kafka-clients, kafka-streams, kafka_2.13, kafka-server, kafka-metadata,
>> kafka-raft, connect-runtime, kafka-group-coordinator). All signed by the
>> primary key, so the RC3 issue is fixed
>> - tag 4.4.0-rc4 matches the 4.4 branch head and the CI run
>> - unit and integration tests from the source tarball
>> - binary tarball: KRaft format/start, metadata.version 4.4-IV2,
>> produce/consume with classic, consumer and share protocols, verifiable
>> producer/consumer with acks=all
>>
>> non-blocking note:
>> - kafka-site #905 was generated on 9/22, so it is missing the later docs
>> changes on 4.4 (#23565, #23479) and the KAFKA-21134 fix (#23671, trunk
>> only). It should be regenerated from the final tag before the release
>>
>> Thanks for running the release, Omnia.
>>
>>> On 2026-10-07 09:09 UTC Omnia Ibrahim wrote:
>>> Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers,
>>> This is the latest candidate for release of Apache Kafka 4.4.0.
>>> Apache Kafka 4.4.0 is a minor release that includes 26 KIPs spanning
>> improvements to all components.
>>> Release notes for the 4.4.0 release:
>> https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.4.0-rc4/RELEASE_NOTES.html
>>> *** Please download, test and vote by Monday, Oct 12, 9am PT ***
>>> Kafka's KEYS file containing PGP keys we use to sign the release:
>>> https://downloads.apache.org/kafka/KEYS
>>> Release artifacts to be voted upon (source and binary):
>>> https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.4.0-rc4/
>>> Docker release artifacts to be voted upon:
>>> apache/kafka:4.4.0-rc4
>>> apache/kafka-native:4.4.0-rc4
>>> Maven artifacts to be voted upon:
>>> https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/org/apache/kafka/
>>> Javadoc:
>> https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.4.0-rc4/javadoc/index.html
>>> Tag to be voted upon (off 4.4 branch) is the 4.4.0 tag:
>>> https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/4.4.0-rc4
>>> Documentation:
>>> PR: https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/905
>>> Protocol:
>>> PR: https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/905
>>> Successful CI builds for the 4.4 branch:
>>> Unit/integration tests:
>> https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/37496670106
>>> System tests: <PENDING>
>>> Successful Docker Image Github Actions Pipeline for 4.4 branch:
>>> Docker Build Test Pipeline (JVM):
>> https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/37591376291
>>> Docker Build Test Pipeline (Native):
>> https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/37591376291
>>> Thanks
>>> Omnia
