CloudNativePG becomes a CNCF Incubating Project | CNCF

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Posted on November 10, 2026 by CloudNativePG Maintainers
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The CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) voted to accept CloudNativePG as a CNCF incubating project.
CloudNativePG is an open source Kubernetes operator that manages the full lifecycle of highly available PostgreSQL clusters. Organizations across financial services, insurance, telecommunications, automotive, retail, and the public sector use it to run production PostgreSQL in Kubernetes without bolting on separate failover tooling.
“What started as a crazy idea of our small team in Prato, Italy, in 2019 is becoming a standard way of running PostgreSQL in production, with the declarative configuration, standardisation, immutability, and security that Kubernetes brings,” said Gabriele Bartolini, VP and Distinguished Engineer at EDB, co-founder and maintainer of CloudNativePG. “We did not accept the status quo: we decided to push both PostgreSQL and Kubernetes into new territory. It is challenging, and there have been tough moments, but today we have one of the best ways to run PostgreSQL at large scale. Incubation is another rung on the ladder, and the journey continues.”
CloudNativePG uses a primary/standby architecture with native streaming replication. Instead of relying on external tools, it integrates directly with the Kubernetes API, so the cluster’s state is declared, reconciled, and observed the same way as any other Kubernetes resource. The operator handles automated failover, rolling updates, self-healing, connection pooling, continuous backup, and point-in-time recovery. It runs the PostgreSQL instances as pods it manages directly, without StatefulSets.
EDB, a leading contributor to PostgreSQL for over two decades, created CloudNativePG and submitted it to the CNCF in 2024, before it was officially accepted as a sandbox project on January 21, 2025. Since then, the community has shipped five releases (1.26 through 1.30), plus ongoing patch releases. The latest, v1.30.1, was published on September 23, 2026. Highlights include:
The project also participates in the CNCF LFX Mentorship program and formalized its governance in a dedicated governance repository, with public, transparent votes recorded as GitHub issues.
CloudNativePG connects to the broader cloud native ecosystem with documented integrations including External Secrets and Cilium. It also works with cert-manager for TLS certificates, exposes metrics through a built-in Prometheus exporter, and offers a Keycloak OAuth validator. A September 2026 CNCF blog shows this in practice with OpenBao running on Kubernetes with CloudNativePG as its storage backend. The setup uses a three-instance cluster with quorum-based synchronous replication to protect data during failover. DatabaseRole resources issue and renew TLS client certificates, so no database role needs a password. Explicit pg_hba rules require certificate authentication, and scheduling rules keep PostgreSQL on dedicated nodes in separate zones.
More than 50 organizations are listed as production adopters, including IBM, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, GEICO Tech, Akamai, Novo Nordisk, REWE International, PZU Group, Tesla, Ericsson, and the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst). Ten of those were added in 2026 alone.
CloudNativePG’s Roadmap
The CloudNativePG roadmap includes release v1.31, planned for around December 2026, and v1.32 for around March 2027. Version 1.31 ships with native Barman Cloud support, which moves fully to the CNPG-I plugin architecture starting with v1.32. Klio, a multi-tiered cloud native backup and recovery solution built on CNPG-I, launches before the end of 2026.
Beyond releases, the project plans to:
CloudNativePG’s main components consist of the following:
The CNCF TOC provides technical leadership to the cloud native projects and community. It defines and maintains the foundation’s technical vision, approves new projects, and stewards them across maturity levels. The TOC also aligns projects within the overall ecosystem, sets cross-cutting standards and best practices, and works with end users to ensure long-term sustainability. As part of its principles, the TOC evaluates and supports projects as they meet requirements for incubation and continue progressing toward graduation.
As a CNCF-hosted project, CloudNativePG 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. CloudNativePG joins incubating technologies Artifact Hub, Backstage, Chaos Mesh, Cloud Custodian, Confidential Containers, Container Network Interface (CNI), Contour, Cortex, Emissary-ingress, Fluid, gRPC, HAMi, k8gb, Keycloak, KServe, Kubescape, KubeVela, KubeVirt, Lima, Litmus, Longhorn, Meshery, metal3-io, Microcks, NATS, 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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