A 2025 look at real-world Kubernetes version adoption

As of October 1, 2025, analysis of Datadog customer Kubernetes clusters shows strong progress in version hygiene: 78% of hosts are on mainstream-supported versions (1.31+), 19% on extended support (1.28–1.30), and 3% unsupported (<1.28), with a residual long tail reaching back to 1.6; managed LTS options from EKS, GKE, and AKS appear to be helping reduce unsupported exposure, though further effort is needed to eliminate legacy clusters.