On behalf of the team and everyone who contributed, we are pleased to announce that Spring for Apache Kafka 4.0.0 is now generally available. We extend our gratitude to all contributors who made this release possible.

Release Journey and Highlights

The development of Spring for Apache Kafka 4.0.0 began in March 2025 with the first milestone release and progressed through five milestone releases and one release candidate over an 8-month development cycle before reaching general availability in November 2025.

This release includes new features, bug fixes, improved documentation, and updated dependencies.

Major Highlights

Kafka 4.0 and Apache Kafka Queues Support (KIP-932)

• Upgraded to Apache Kafka client version 4.1.1
• Added comprehensive support for Kafka's new share consumer pattern (Preview Mode)
• Introduced SharedConsumerContainer and factory support with full acknowledgment capabilities
• Added ShareKafkaListener annotation for queue-based consumption

Observability and Tracing Enhancements

• Per-record observations support in batch listeners
• Enhanced reply tracing for ReplyingKafkaTemplate
• Improved error metric collection with proper exception reporting

Spring Framework 7.0 Integration

• Full compatibility with Spring Framework 7.0.0
• JSpecify nullability annotations throughout the codebase
• Removed dependency on Spring Retry in favor of Spring Framework's core retry mechanism

Jackson 3 Support

• Added Jackson 3 (tools.jackson) support while maintaining Jackson 2 compatibility
• Jackson 2 support is now deprecated

Performance Optimizations

• Improved acknowledge(int index) performance in batch acknowledgment
• Optimized ArrayList allocations in BatchMessagingMessageConverter
• Added header match performance caching

Other Notable Features

• Support for adding (not just overriding) record interceptors
• Configurable CompositeBatchInterceptor
• KafkaAdmin.deleteTopics() method
• Enhanced SpEL/placeholder resolution in RetryableTopic
• Improved container stopping events with proper reason tracking
• Enhanced SmartMessageConverter support for batch listeners

Release Notes

4.0.0 release notes: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0

Earlier Milestone Releases

• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-M1
• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-M2
• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-M3
• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-M4
• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-M5
• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka/releases/tag/v4.0.0-RC1

Spring Boot Integration

The 4.0.0 release will be integrated into the upcoming Spring Boot 4.0.0 release.

Other Releases

In addition to the 4.0.0 GA, we also released a patch release for 3.3.11. The 3.3.11 release will be integrated with the upcoming Spring Boot 3.5.8 and 3.4.12 releases.

Two commercial versions of Spring for Apache Kafka—3.2.12 and 3.1.14—have also been released. These enterprise releases will be integrated into the upcoming Spring Boot commercial releases 3.3.16 and 3.2.19, respectively.

Community Feedback

As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.

GitHub | Issues | Documentation | Stack Overflow