If you're a maintainer of a growing CNCF project, you know the "support tax" well. As your community grows, so does the volume of repetitive technical questions across Slack, Discord, and GitHub issues. This often pulls maintainers away from what they do best: writing code and building features.

That's why some high-traffic CNCF projects like OpenTelemetry and Envoy Gateway have already turned to Kapa.ai for help. Both projects are using Kapa to handle thousands of community questions every month, freeing up their maintainers to focus on what matters most.

The CNCF is pleased to announce a partnership with Kapa.ai. Through this collaboration, CNCF-hosted projects can now access Kapa.ai's AI-powered technical assistants for free.

Welcome to the March 2026 edition of the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) Newsletter. We hope you’re excited for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in Amsterdam in a few days!

CNCF staff will be at the Maintainer Summit and the Project Pavilion throughout the week. Please find us if you have any questions about support for your projects.

Table of contents​

• PCC Adoption Gathers Momentum: Streamline Your Project's Meetings
• Updates to the Open Source Partnership Program (OSPP)
• Rolling out .project for Project Metadata
• Looking for a New Role? Check out GitJobs
• Happenings at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU

Late last year, we announced the strategic agreement with GitHub to provide GitHub Copilot Enterprise licenses to CNCF project maintainers at no cost. Since then, we have seen a strong response from the community, with over 100 Enterprise seats already in active use.

As we move forward, we are working to simplify our infrastructure and billing. To that end, we will be phasing out all legacy GitHub Copilot Business licenses in early April 2026.

Welcome to the February 2026 edition of the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) Newsletter.

We hope you’re excited for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe and plan to attend the Maintainer Summit!

You can learn more about the event and other worldwide KubeCon + CloudNativeCon opportunities in this month’s newsletter.

• Scholarships & Travel Funding Deadlines
• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2026
• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Worldwide
• Virtual Events
• Update Your Project Logos
• Call for Kubernetes AI Conformance applications and reference architectures
• See you next month

Planning a major update, new feature, or milestone to align with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 (March 23–26)? The CNCF PR team can help amplify your news.

Announcements will be:

• Included in the official media news package shared with journalists and analysts
• Highlighted during CNCF's on-site press conference
• Scheduled for release March 23–26 (CET)

Welcome to the January 2026 edition of the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) Newsletter.

In 2025 we saw continued project growth, with the TOC accepting an additional six projects to close out the year. The speed at which projects join the CNCF and advance through levels has improved thanks to better processes, and we've expanded the variety of services available to maintainers through new partnerships with providers. We are committed to serving our 2,000+ maintainers and 300,000+ contributors even better in 2026.

Please take a moment to complete the 2H 2025 Maintainer Survey. Your feedback is vital for us to serve you better this year. The survey will close on January 30th, so please respond as soon as you can!

• Google Summer of Code 2026 opportunities
• Please take the Maintainer Survey
• KubeCon+CloudNativeCon 2026 – Scholarships & Travel Funding Deadlines
• KubeCon+CloudNativeCon 2026 – Maintainer Summit & Travel Info
• Call for Kubernetes AI Conformance applications and reference architectures
• GitHub Copilot guidance
• Docker Hardened Images are now free for projects
• CNCF Projects Calendar Migration
• Help us help you
• See you next month

Last year, the CNCF and Docker announced an expanded partnership through the Docker Sponsored Open Source (DSOS) Program to increase infrastructure and tooling support available to CNCF project maintainers. Since then, Docker has made Docker Hardened Images (DHI) freely available to all developers.

We are highlighting this update for the benefit of the CNCF maintainer community, as DHI can be used by CNCF projects as a secure and transparent foundation for shipping container images.

Maintaining a CNCF project involves managing critical infrastructure at scale, including publishing trusted images and ensuring dependencies remain secure. To support these efforts, the CNCF-Docker partnership (announced in 2025) enables CNCF projects to access Docker's Sponsored Open Source (DSOS) program. DSOS provides essential infrastructure and security tools specifically for non-commercial open-source maintainers.

Here is what you need to know about the benefits, eligibility, and how to apply.

The CNCF LFX Mentorship 2026 Term 1 (March - May) is open for project proposals. Since 2020, 25 LFX mentee alumni have gone on to become CNCF project maintainers. This is a great opportunity to grow your contributor community.

CNCF LFX Mentorship 2026 Term 1 Mar-May

Key LFX dates:

• Project Proposals Open: Wednesday, January 7 – Tuesday, January 20, 2026
• Mentee Applications Open: Monday, January 26 – Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 11AM PST (19:00 UTC)
• Application Review Period: Wednesday, February 11 – Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 11AM PST (19:00 UTC)

In addition to LFX, the CNCF is planning on being a Mentoring Organization again this year for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and can help projects looking to participate in the program. This is a fantastic opportunity to increase your project's contributor community and get valuable work done!

In 2026, GSoC is actively looking to bring in more projects in the areas of Security and AI/ML.

GSoC 2026 Announcement

CNCF Project GSoC 2026 Ideas

Key GSoC dates:

• Organizations application period: Monday, Jan 19, to Tuesday, Feb 3, 2026
• CNCF Project proposals submissions recommendation: Wednesday Jan 14, 2026
  • Note, proposals can still be submitted after this recommended date, but the Mentorship team needs time to evaluate the proposals and package our application. The more proposals we have, the stronger our org application will be.

We're looking forward to seeing all the project ideas you're interested in working on!

Welcome to the Cloud Native Project Monthly (CNPM) December 2025 (Year End Edition).

It's been an amazing 2025 with record project growth, improvements in the speed that projects join the CNCF and move levels, and the breadth of new services we've made available to maintainers.

We look forward to helping your projects make an even greater impact in 2026.

And please take the 2H 2025 Maintainer Survey when you have a chance. It will help us serve you better in the coming year.

Thank you, we hope you enjoy the end of year downtime and we wish you the best in the new year!

• ✍️ Please take the Maintainer Survey
• 🚲 Upcoming project opportunity deadline (TODAY!)
• 🎥 Maintainer Summit recordings available
• 🚀 New contribute.cncf.io launched
• 📄 Call for Kubernetes AI Conformance applications and reference architectures
• 🧑‍🎓 CNCF LFX 2026 Term 1 call for proposals open soon
• 🔑 Google Summer of Code 2026 opportunities
• 🤖 GitHub Copilot guidance
• 🕵️ Kusari Inspector free for projects
• 🐳 Docker Hardened Images free for projects
• 📈 Telemetry collection and privacy guidelines
• 🙏 Please take the Maintainer Survey
• 🎉 Thank you for an amazing year