• Branch Cut / Feature Freeze: 12th of January 2025
• Code Freeze / Release Candidate: 29th of January 2025
• Release Date: scheduled 12th of February 2025

N/A

• Francisco Herrera - RedHat (fjglira)
• Darrin Cecil - Microsoft (darrinthomascecil)
• Petr McAllister - Solo.io (PetrMc)

On the 12th of January, the primary RM will create the release-1.29 branch, based on master. Any changes on master before this date will be included in the release. Any changes after will have to be cherry-picked.

To get a PR merged into the release branch, it must first be merged into the master branch. PRs can automatically be cherry-picked by typing by adding the cherrypick/release-1.29 label to the PR.

A PR on the release branch will only be approved if:

• The change is already on master.
  • exception: if a change only applies to the release branch, and should not go to master, a change can be submitted directly to the release branch, but please note this in the PR description.
• The change is a bug fix, documentation enhancement, or testing enhancement.
  • Changes that are risky may require a feature flag, especially after the 1.25.0 release.
  • Any change not meeting the above, such as a new feature or API, may require TOC approval.

Note that these policies may vary in different branch stages, for more details please check out this document.

Release preparation Issue: https://github.com/istio/istio/issues/58583

Note: on the istio.io repo, changes should go directly to master until after the 1.29 launch. The changes will appear on preliminary istio.io.