Merge pull request #1933 from mattfarina/blog-helm-4

Adding post on Helm v4

Author: mattfarina

blog/2025-11-17-helm-4-released/index.md

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+---
+title: "Helm 4 Released"
+slug: "helm-4-released"
+authors: ["mattfarina"]
+date: "2025-11-17"
+---
+
+On Wednesday November 12th, during the [Helm 4 presentation at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon](https://sched.co/27Nme), [Helm v4.0.0](https://github.com/helm/helm/releases/tag/v4.0.0) was released. This is the first new major version of Helm in 6 years. <!-- truncate -->
+
+## What's New
+
+Helm v3 has served the Kubernetes community well for many years. During that time we saw new ways to use Helm, new applications installed via charts, the rise of [Artifact Hub](https://artifacthub.io/), and numerous tools that build on top of Helm. We also saw where we wanted to add features but the internal architecture of Helm didn't provide a path forward without breaking public APIs in the SDK. Helm 4 makes those changes to enable new features now and into the future.
+
+Some of the new features include:
+
+- Redesigned plugin system that supports Web Assembly based plugins
+- Post-renderers are now plugins
+- Server side apply is now supported
+- Improved resource watching, to support waiting, based on kstatus
+- Local Content-based caching (e.g. for charts)
+- Logging via slog enabling SDK logging to integrate with modern loggers
+- Reproducible/Idempotent builds of chart archives
+- Updated SDK API including support for multiple chart API versions (new experimental v3 chart API version coming soon)
+
+You can learn about more of the changes in the [Helm 4 Overview](/docs/overview).
+
+## Helm v3 Support
+
+When a major version of software comes out, it takes awhile to make the transition. Helm v3 will continue to be supported to enable a clean transition period. The dates of continued support are:
+
+* Bug fixes until July 8th 2026.
+* Security fixes until November 11th 2026.
+
+Helm releases updates on Wednesdays (typically the 2nd Wednesday in a month) and these dates correspond with release schedule dates. During this time there will be **_NO_** features backported other than updates to the Kubernetes client libraries that enable support of new Kubernetes versions.
+
+## Learn More
+
+You can learn about the Helm changes in the [overview](/docs/overview) or find all the changes in the [full changelog](/docs/changelog). The documentation shares many more details as you can find all the ways Helm has stayed the same and the new features you can take advantage of.