Apache Kafka End of Life: Kafka Versions EOL Every 4 Months — Are You Behind?

endoflife-ai Posted on May 30 • Originally published at endoflife.ai Apache Kafka End of Life: Kafka Versions EOL Every 4 Months — Are You Behind? # kafka # security # devops # architecture Apache Kafka's release cadence is fast. A new minor version ships roughly every four months. EOL dates arrive quickly — and because Kafka sits at the heart of data pipelines, teams are slower to upgrade than they are with application-layer software. The result: a lot of production Kafka clusters running EOL versions handling compliance-critical data. Kafka 3.6 reached end of life in April 2026. If you're on 3.5 or earlier, you're already past EOL. Complete Kafka EOL Schedule Version End of Life Status Kafka 2.8 Oct 2023 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.0 Feb 2024 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.1 Jul 2024 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.2 Oct 2024 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.3 Feb 2025 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.4 Sep 2025 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.5 Dec 2025 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.6 Apr 2026 ❌ EOL Kafka 3.7 Sep 2026 ✅ Supported Kafka 3.8 Mar 2027 ✅ Supported Kafka 4.0 TBD ✅ Latest The community maintains the two most recent minor versions . Everything else receives no further security patches or bug fixes. EOL Risk Score for Kafka 2.8: 84 Critical View → endoflife.ai/score/apache-kafka/2.8 Why Kafka EOL Risk Is Different Kafka isn't stateless. It stores your data . An EOL web framework is a security risk. An EOL Kafka cluster is a security risk that also has custody of every message in your topics. CVEs affecting Kafka directly impact the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your event streams. Historically significant Kafka CVEs include: Authentication bypass vulnerabilities SCRAM authentication weaknesses Denial-of-service issues in the broker's request handling In regulated industries — financial services, healthcare, any organization handling PII — an EOL Kafka cluster processing that data creates direct compliance exposure. The ZooKeeper Story: The Biggest Change in Kafka's History Kafka 4.0, released March 2025, removed ZooKeeper support entirely . The timel