KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe kicked off today in London, bringing together professionals in the Kubernetes space for a week of informative talks and networking opportunities.

A number of companies in the Kubernetes space have announced updates at the event, along with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) itself, the organization that maintains Kubernetes and hosts this event in partnership with the Linux Foundation.

Here are a couple of highlights from day 1 of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe.

CNCF announces pre-release of Argo CD v3

The upcoming release is the first major version change to the continuous delivery system since 2021, adding new features such as:

  • The ability to update RBAC permissions on resources
  • Several new configuration defaults
  • New recommendations for secrets management

“Argo CD v3 builds upon the project’s strong foundation, empowering teams to manage Kubernetes applications with greater efficiency,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of CNCF. “Beyond improving security and scalability improvements, this release accelerates the adoption of GitOps best practices, fostering a more resilient and agile infrastructure. As organizations increasingly rely on Kubernetes at scale, Argo CD v3 is a critical step forward in reducing complexity, enhancing automation, and setting new benchmarks for open source application delivery.”

CNCF expands Kubestronaut program

Kubestronaut is an achievement that can be obtained for completing all five of the CNCF’s Kubernetes certifications. Now, the organization is launching the Golden Kubestronaut program, which can be achieved by completing all 13 of the CNCF’s certifications and the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator program.  

Golden Kubestronauts will receive benefits such as branded gear, a ThriveOne subscription, discounts on CNCF certifications, a free annual ticket to one Kubernetes Community Day, half off KubeCon registrations, and a featured listing on the Kubestronaut website. 

Red Hat Developer Hub 1.5 now available 

Red Hat’s internal developer portal (IDP) now includes Adoption Insights, which provides analytics on how development teams are using the IDP.  

This release also includes a preview of the Extensions Catalog, which provides information on over 60 dynamic plugins that can be added to the IDP. 

Red Hat Developer Hub 1.5 also includes RHDH Local, which is a version of the platform that can be run locally. 

Tigera announces Calico Open Source 3.30

Calico, a solution for container networking and security, is getting improved observability features, such as Goldmane, a gPRC-based API endpoint that provides access to the flow logs and metrics that Calico generates, and Whisker, a web-based tool that can be connected to Goldmane to get instant access to those flow logs. 

Other new features include support for GlobalStagedNetworkPolicy and StagedNetworkPolicy to enable microsegmentation and the addition of Calico Ingress Gateway for managing ingress, based on Envoy Gateway.

Groundcover announces one-click Kubernetes dashboards

These new dashboards provide a quick look into the health of Kubernetes nodes and clusters. Users can also cycle through different dashboard visualizations and dive into any data more deeply to enable faster troubleshooting. 

“Teams can now spin up a native Kubernetes dashboard on demand and groundcover will do the heavy lifting based on your technology stack,” said Orr Benjamin, head of product at

groundcover. “We’ve created a unique bi-directional flow: whether you start with an alert and

want to generate a dashboard, or you already have a dashboard and want to start exploring the

data, the common data model shared across the entire platform makes these investigation flows

seamless with a single click.”

LoftLabs reveals vNode to enable workload isolation in shared Kubernetes nodes

vNode, or virtual nodes, adds a layer of virtualization on the node level to ensure that workloads are fully isolated. This allows teams to utilize shared infrastructure while maintaining strict security boundaries, the company explained.

Beyond vNode, the company also announced a couple of updates for its other product vCluster, including the ability to take a snapshot of a virtual cluster state and restore it at any time, and a new integration with Rancher Labs. 

CloudCasa by Catalogic announces latest version of platform

The CloudCasa platform provides backup and recovery for Kubernetes deployments. With the latest update, users will be able to select specific virtual machines (VMs) for backup and restore, and control the state of the VMs as they are restored. 

The platform also now allows specific selection of Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) for backup and restore, and improved flexibility in file-level restores.