Open Cluster Management (OCM) becomes a CNCF Incubating Project | CNCF

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Posted on November 10, 2026 by Staff
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The CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) voted to accept Open Cluster Management as a CNCF incubating project.
Open Cluster Management is an open source project that simplifies the management of Kubernetes clusters across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. Using a hub-and-spoke architecture and open APIs, OCM enables organizations to manage cluster registration, application deployment, and workload placement across multiple clusters without relying on a proprietary control plane.
“Reaching CNCF incubation validates the engineering rigor of our global maintainers and the growing adoption of OCM across large-scale production fleets,” said Mike Ng, Maintainer, Open Cluster Management. From an architecture perspective, what I’m proudest of is our commitment to a lightweight, modular foundation rather than a monolithic platform. Built in close alignment with Kubernetes SIG-Multicluster standards, our asynchronous pull model guarantees cluster autonomy without centralizing sensitive credentials on the hub. Just as importantly, our pluggable add-on framework turns OCM into an extensible substrate, making it effortless for other cloud-native projects to inherit multicluster capabilities without reinventing the plumbing. Looking ahead, we are focused on streamlining setup and onboarding while advancing progressive rollouts for safer workload delivery, ultimately keeping distributed Kubernetes simple, secure, and composable.”
As organizations grow beyond a handful of Kubernetes clusters across clouds, regions, edge locations, and teams, they have to register and onboard clusters, distribute applications and policies, keep configuration consistent, and recover from failures without disrupting running workloads. Open Cluster Management provides these capabilities through vendor neutral, declarative Kubernetes APIs, and its hub-and-spoke model is designed to survive the failure and recovery of components without interrupting workloads.
Originally developed by IBM and Red Hat, Open Cluster Management joined the CNCF Sandbox in November 2021. Since reaching its 1.0 release in June 2025, the project has delivered four subsequent minor updates (up through 1.4 in October 2026), expanding its capabilities for multicluster management, application delivery, and observability. Key release highlights include:
OCM works closely with the broader cloud native ecosystem. It implements and aligns with the Kubernetes SIG Multicluster APIs, supplies Argo CD with cluster decisions for GitOps deployments, and integrates with Cluster API for cluster lifecycle. KubeVela, KubeStellar, Kueue, and Meshery all document OCM integrations, and the project maintains add-ons and examples for Argo CD, Fluid, and OpenTelemetry. Twenty-seven maintainers from eight organizations, including Red Hat, Guidewire, eBay, AppsCode, and Spectro Cloud, lead the project.
OCM has demonstrated adoption across organizations including Alibaba Cloud, AppsCode, Guidewire, Red Hat, and Spectro Cloud. At eBay, OCM supports application deployment across more than 190 Kubernetes clusters through integrations with Argo CD. Groww uses OCM to support progressive application rollouts, while VESSEL AI leverages the project to manage GPU clusters and distribute AI workloads across cloud environments.
“As Kubernetes adoption expands across increasingly complex environments, organizations need open, interoperable approaches to managing clusters at scale,” said Karena Angell, CNCF Technical Oversight Committee member. “Open Cluster Management has demonstrated technical maturity, a growing contributor community, and meaningful adoption across the cloud native ecosystem. Its advancement to incubation reflects the project’s progress in helping organizations manage multicluster environments without relying on proprietary solutions.”
Open Cluster Management’s main components consist of the following:
The CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) provides technical leadership to CNCF projects, overseeing their progression through maturity levels and supporting long-term sustainability. Projects advancing to incubation demonstrate growing adoption, technical maturity, and community development.
As a CNCF-hosted project, Open Cluster Management is part of a neutral foundation aligned with its technical interests, as well as the larger Linux Foundation, which provides governance, marketing support, and community outreach. OCM joins incubating technologies Artifact Hub, Backstage, Chaos Mesh, Cloud Custodian, Container Network Interface (CNI), Contour, Cortex, Emissary-ingress, Fluid, gRPC, HAMi, k8gb, Keycloak, KServe, Kubescape, KubeVela, KubeVirt, Lima, Litmus, Longhorn, Meshery, metal3-io, Microcks, Notary Project, OpenCost, OpenFeature, OpenFGA, OpenKruise, OpenYurt, Operator Framework, Strimzi, Tekton, Thanos, Volcano, and wasmCloud.
For detailed maturity requirements at each level, please visit the CNCF Graduation Criteria.
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