Helm Chart Release Cadence - When can we expect updates beyond 3.0.2?

[giovere]

Hi Airflow maintainers,

I noticed that the latest Helm chart release is version 3.0.2 from July 13, 2025, which is now relatively outdated given the ongoing development in the Airflow project.
I'm curious about the expected release cadence for the official Helm chart:

1. Is there a regular schedule for Helm chart releases, or are they tied to specific Airflow version milestones?
2. What's the typical lag between a new Airflow version release and the corresponding Helm chart update?
3. Are there any blockers currently preventing a new chart release, or is one planned in the near future?

For context, we're planning an enterprise deployment on OpenShift and are evaluating whether to:

• Wait for an official chart update
• Customize the existing 3.0.2 chart to work with newer Airflow versions

Any insight into the release process or timeline would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks for maintaining this project!

[potiuk]

I don;t think we have regular schedule of releases for the chart - it is done opportunistically. This might (and should) change in the future - for example you can see it in those meeting notes from our dev call https://lists.apache.org/thread/2q91c14hsgf7oo820kpphjsqbzjdm8vc - but no final decisions have been made. However if you would like to contribute and help with clarifying it, joining the dev call and making some concrete proposals might eventually speed up things (especially if you also volunteer to make it happen - this is an open source project and we welcome contributions of any type - including for example proposing and leading to completion of the regularity in Helm Chart release, that's a nice way to help the community.

For now - the version of airflow in the chart is just "default" and general rule is that you can use it with future versions of Airflow as well.

[potiuk]

Customize the existing 3.0.2 chart to work with newer Airflow versions

BTW. It's not customization. Customization (i.e. extending the chart ) is explained in https://airflow.apache.org/docs/helm-chart/stable/extending-the-chart.html and it describes how you can add whatever you find missing in the chart on your own - as an open source project, the chart is not a "black box" - you are absolutely free to extend and customize the chart as you wish - I would call our chart a "reference" chart that is good for you to start with and extend as you wish.

But changing the version of airflow is not "customization" - it's plainly "configuration" https://airflow.apache.org/docs/helm-chart/stable/airflow-configuration.html -> the values.yaml is a standard way how you can configure any chart, so this is nothing "strange" or "custom" to configure your chart with values that are different than default values - this is why values.yaml exist at all - this is main purpose of it and anything described there is "configuration" - anything there (including airflow version) is something you are supposed to change when you deploy the chart even if you do not want to customize or extend the chart itself.

[potiuk]

We have just discussed releases of Helm Chart among the release managment team and we are aiming to introduce regular cadence of releases:

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/AIRFLOW/Release+Plan

Note that this is what is the intention, not committment, and it very much depends on time that volunteers can spend so that users like you can get the software for absolutely free. So a good idea is also to give back to the community for the free software you get from it. So - since you have some expectations to us, I will have an expectation to you - please subscribe to the devlist, and patiently wait when new helm chart release candidate is released. When we do it, we ask the users to test if the release candidate is good for them, has no issues, and whether it works as expected. Usually the voting period for release candidate is at least 72 hrs and we expect people like you (who are eager to get it) to report their test status.

It would be surprising to not see you among the people testing it @giovere

[giovere]

Thanks for the update and for sharing the release plan! I appreciate the transparency about the volunteer-driven nature of the project.
I'm absolutely willing to contribute back to the community. I'll subscribe to the dev mailing list and commit to testing the next Helm chart release candidate when it's available.
For context, we're running on OpenShift.
Looking forward to participating in the RC testing process. Thanks again for all the work the maintainers put into this project!