Axual 2026.3

Kafka Connect support: Connectors can now run on native Kafka Connect clusters. Register multiple Kafka Connect clusters per Kafka cluster, each with an owning group and a list of authorised groups that can deploy connectors to it. Registration validates the REST URL, installed plugins, log viewer settings and Vault credentials, and a plugin browser shows what each cluster provides. Existing Axual Connect clusters keep working unchanged; connector offsets aren’t migrated automatically between Axual Connect and Kafka Connect. Read more in Kafka Connect and Migrate from Axual Connect to Kafka Connect.

Flink SQL applications: Flink SQL is now a fully managed application type. Create, start and stop Flink SQL applications through Self-Service, each running on its own isolated resources. You write the business logic in a SQL tab with syntax highlighting; the Kafka source and sink tables, credentials and schema registry settings are generated for you. Application logs are viewable from Self-Service. Read more in Flink SQL Applications.

Uniform managed application lifecycle: Connectors, KSML and Flink SQL applications now share one lifecycle. An application stays Undeployed until its configuration is complete, then moves through Starting, Running, Completed (for finite jobs) or Failed. A new Resume action restarts a stopped application from its saved state instead of starting fresh. The platform reads the runtime state live from the cluster and only stores the desired state. Read more in Application Management.

Self-Service service accounts: A new Service Accounts tab under Users lets you create service accounts for automation such as Terraform, assign them roles and groups, and authenticate with either a client secret (rotated from the UI) or federated authentication through Microsoft Entra ID, so no secret is stored on the platform. Read more in Service Accounts.

Tenant Admin Insights: A new Shared Principals insight lists principals used by more than one application, and every insight table can now be exported as CSV. Read more in Tenant Admin Insights.

Change topic retention type: A topic’s retention policy (for example, from delete to compact) can now be changed on deployed environments, with a per-environment confirmation. Read more in Topic Management.

CEL filter help in Topic Browse: Topic Browse & Search now offers CEL guidance and autocomplete when filtering messages. Read more in Topic Browse (Messages).

Many bug fixes and documentation improvements across the platform.