Features

• dra device allocation tracking (#3014) #3014 (Jason Deal)
• ignore NodeReadinessController taints in scheduling (#3025) #3025 (Muhammad Ahsan Gill)

Bug Fixes

• support volume topology scheduling alternatives (#2743) #2743 (Alex Leites)
• add kubebuilder markers for non-breaking kube-api-linter issues (#2654) #2654 (Shun Takahashi)
• termination: prevent negative pod grace period when Node Repair triggers (#3038) #3038 (praveen9354)
• isolate per-NodePool failures in nodeoverlay controller (#3002) #3002 (João Vieira)
• have each NodeClaim independently track port usage (#3022) #3022 (GaneshBannur)

Documentation

• add Linode provider to README (#2986) #2986 (Khaja Omer)
• add Huawei Cloud provider to README (#3036) #3036 (Setoru)

Performance Improvements

• improve skip condition for applyPriceOverlays (#2990) #2990 (Jesse Anttila)

Tests

• inject fakeClock into test helpers via operatorpkg WithClock (#3009) #3009 (Derek Frank)
• add Clock to test.Environment and use env.Clock in all test helpers (#3045) #3045 (Derek Frank)

Chores

• switch from docker/docker to karpenter test package for kwok cloud provider (#2991) #2991 (Joshua Guo)
• Create kwok/util randomname to fix e2e tests (#3005) #3005 (Andrew Mitchell)
• deps: bump the go-deps group across 1 directory with 4 updates (#3007) #3007 (dependabot[bot])
• add reason to consolidatable status condition removal log (#3011) #3011 (praveen9354)
• go fix ./... (#3024) #3024 (Alex Leites)
• add pending pods by zone metric (#3000) #3000 (Ryan Mistretta)
• add local replace for sigs.k8s.io/karpenter in go.tools.mod (#3027) #3027 (Derek Frank)
• bump golang.org/x/net to v0.55.0 to resolve GO-2026-5026 (#3041) #3041 (Wataru)
• bump go to 1.26.4 to resolve vulncheck failures (#3066) #3066 (Jigisha Patil)
• bump max k8s version to 1.36 (#3079) #3079 (Andrew Mitchell)