Confluent new features in August 2026

Everything Confluent shipped in August 2026: 20 releases, grouped by product, each linked to Confluent's release notes.

July 2026 September 2026

GA 1Preview 5Update 14

Confluent Cloud20

Confluent CloudAug 31, 2026

Custom SMTs can make external network calls (Limited Availability)

Custom SMTs on fully managed connectors can call endpoints outside Confluent Cloud, such as KMS, secret stores, or data enrichment APIs, as a Limited Availability feature.

PreviewSecurityData integrationDeveloper toolsSource

Confluent CloudAug 31, 2026

Unified Stream Manager supports Azure Private Link

Unified Stream Manager now supports Azure Private Link for connecting self-managed Confluent Platform clusters, in addition to AWS PrivateLink.

UpdateStreamingSecuritySource

Confluent CloudAug 27, 2026

IP filtering extends to public Kafka and ksqlDB access

IP filtering now protects public Kafka and ksqlDB access, expanding on support for resource management, schema management, and Flink.

UpdateStreamingSource

Confluent CloudAug 26, 2026

IBM MQ Sink connector input key format configurable

The input key format is now configurable for IBM MQ Sink connectors on Confluent Cloud.

UpdateData integrationSource

Confluent CloudAug 26, 2026

IBM MQ Source connector adds STRING and BYTES output formats

The IBM MQ Source connector now supports STRING and BYTES output data formats on Confluent Cloud.

UpdateData integrationSource

Confluent CloudAug 26, 2026

IBM MQ Source connector output key format configurable

The output key format is now configurable for IBM MQ Source connectors on Confluent Cloud.

UpdateData integrationSource

Confluent CloudAug 25, 2026

Unified Stream Manager alerting for Confluent Platform clusters

USM monitors conditions such as offline partitions, broker storage exhaustion, and stalled telemetry, delivering alerts to Console, email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a webhook.

UpdateStreamingObservabilitySource

Confluent CloudAug 19, 2026

Cloud Console idle session timeout raised to two hours

The idle session timeout increases from 30 minutes to two hours, measured by console interaction. The eight-hour maximum session length is unchanged.

UpdateSource

Confluent CloudAug 19, 2026

Secret manager integration adds HTTP V2 and Oracle XStream connectors

Secret manager integration now extends to the HTTP Sink V2, HTTP Source V2, and Oracle XStream CDC Source fully managed connectors.

UpdateStreamingSecurityData integrationSource

Confluent CloudAug 18, 2026

AI_FORECAST and AI_DETECT_ANOMALIES support IBM Granite time-series models

The built-in functions now support IBM Granite TTM, FlowState, and PatchTST-FM models as an Early Access Program feature, alongside Google TimesFM 2.5.

PreviewDeveloper toolsSource

Confluent CloudAug 18, 2026

Baseline CFU for Flink statements (Limited Availability)

Set a best-effort minimum scaling target for an individual Flink statement; Autopilot keeps the statement at or above it. Configurable in Console or the Flink SQL REST API.

PreviewSQLStreamingDeveloper toolsSource

Confluent CloudAug 18, 2026

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink: Engine for Mission-Critical, Real-Time Operational Systems and dbt/SQL-Native Home for Data Science and AI

Flink now acts as a robust engine for developers through Table API, UDFs, and PTFs while offering a SQL-native, dbt-integrated platform for data science and AI teams.

UpdateSQLStreamingDeveloper toolsSource

Confluent CloudAug 18, 2026

Lightning queries for Real-Time Context Engine data (Early Access)

Query the data the Real-Time Context Engine serves to AI agents directly through an API, without an agent, by reading the materialized table Confluent maintains for a topic.

PreviewAI agentsSQLStreamingSource

Confluent CloudAug 18, 2026

New in Confluent Cloud and WarpStream: Evolving the Data Streaming Platform for AI, Scale, and Control

Accelerate enterprise streaming and AI workloads with new product updates across Kora, connectors, Flink, Tableflow, AI anomaly detection and forecasting, security enhancements, and Warpstream.

UpdateStreamingSecurityData integrationSource

Confluent CloudAug 18, 2026

New in Confluent Intelligence and AI Tools: Making Agents Native to the Stream, Expanded Model Support, New Agent Skills, and Confluent Assistant

Explore new AI features and AI tools: support for IBM Granite Time Series models and TimesFM models (EA), enhanced Real-Time Context Engine experience, new Agent Skills, Confluent Assistant

UpdateAI agentsStreamingSource

Confluent CloudAug 17, 2026

Flink FROM_CHANGELOG and TO_CHANGELOG functions generally available

Built-in changelog conversion functions read custom-format change data into queryable tables and turn updating tables back into append-only streams, with user-mapped operation codes and no UDFs required.

GASQLStreamingObservabilitySource

Confluent CloudAug 12, 2026

Advanced Message Search in Open Preview

Build filters in the message browser to refine results by fields such as a customer ID anywhere in a topic's retained history, without writing a consumer or stream-processing job.

PreviewStreamingSource

Confluent CloudAug 12, 2026

Connector secret managers support VPC and VNet Peering

AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault integration for fully managed connectors now support VPC Peering and VNet Peering respectively, in addition to PrivateLink.

UpdateSecurityData integrationSource

Confluent CloudAug 12, 2026

Metrics API export adds group_protocol label for consumer lag

The group_protocol label is now on the /export endpoint for consumer lag and rebalance time metrics, so you can split them by classic or consumer rebalance protocol in scrape-based tools.

UpdateObservabilityDeveloper toolsSource

Confluent CloudAug 12, 2026

Secret manager integration adds DynamoDB, Lambda, Azure Blob, BigQuery, Redis connectors

Secret manager integration now extends to Amazon DynamoDB CDC Source and Sink, AWS Lambda Sink, Azure Blob Storage Sink, Google BigQuery Sink V2, and Redis Kafka Sink and Source.

UpdateSQLStreamingSecuritySource