TL;DR: Kubernetes v1.36 releases April 22, 2026. The headline features are DRA GPU partitioning, workload-aware preemption for AI/ML jobs, and the permanent removal of the gitRepo volume plugin. Ingress-nginx is also officially retired. If you run AI inference workloads or care about cluster security, this release is not optional reading. Why This Release Matters More Than Most The CNCF's 2025 a