Apache Polaris 1.6.0

Released on July 8th, 2026.

Downloads🔗

Release Notes🔗

Upgrade notes🔗

• Event listeners are now executed on a dedicated executor. This executor does not propagate the original request’s CDI context; listeners that were improperly relying on that should instead manage their own CDI request scope from now on. Furthermore, two new configuration options were introduced to configure the executor:
  • polaris.event-listener.executor.pool-size configures the thread pool size.
  • polaris.event-listener.executor.queue-size configures the queue size for pending events when all threads are busy.

Breaking changes🔗

• The MaintenanceService.performMaintenance() signature now requires an explicit OptionalLong overrideRunId argument to supersede the latest unfinished maintenance run.
• The REST layer now enforces stricter validation for entity names (including namespaces, tables, views, and generic tables). Requests containing invalid names will be rejected with an HTTP 400 error. Existing clients should verify and rename entities before upgrading if their names fall into the following forbidden categories:
  • Empty strings
  • Names consisting solely of . or ..
  • Names containing control (invisible) characters
  • Names with leading or trailing whitespace
  • Names containing any of these characters: /:*?"<>|#+`

New Features🔗

• Added SESSION_NAME_FIELDS_IN_SUBSCOPED_CREDENTIAL feature flag for AWS credential vending. Operators can now configure an ordered list of fields (realm, catalog, namespace, table, principal) to compose structured STS role session names (e.g. p-acme-hr_catalog-employee-etl_writer). Session names are sanitized and proportionally truncated to the AWS 64-character limit. When unset, existing INCLUDE_PRINCIPAL_NAME_IN_SUBSCOPED_CREDENTIAL behaviour is preserved.
• Added hostUsers support in Helm chart.
• Added documentation for BigQuery Metastore Catalog federation. Build with -PNonRESTCatalogs=BIGQUERY to include the BigQueryMetastoreCatalog federation extension. See site/content/in-dev/unreleased/federation/bigquery-metastore-federation.md.
• Support for view registration has been added.
• Python client: added support for Python 3.14
• Added support for register table overwrite semantics in the Iceberg REST catalog flow (overwrite=true) for internal Polaris catalogs. With overwrite enabled, existing table pointers can be updated to a new metadata location while preserving default behavior for overwrite=false.
• Added REGISTER_TABLE_OVERWRITE authorization operation mapped to TABLE_FULL_METADATA for deterministic overwrite authorization.
• Added Polaris Spark 4.0 client.

Changes🔗

• Added REPL support to Polaris CLI.
• The nosql maintenance-run admin command now rejects a new run when the latest recorded maintenance run is still unfinished, unless the operator explicitly passes --supersede-run=<run-id>.
• Added version option to Polaris CLI.
• The token broker now builds the JWT Algorithm and JWTVerifier once per realm in the TokenBrokerFactory and reuses them across requests, instead of rebuilding them on every verify()/sign() call on the request-scoped broker. For deployments using file-based symmetric secrets, the secret is now read once per realm (at first use) rather than on every JWT operation; rotating the on-disk secret requires a restart.