The Helm team announced the Helm 4 beta — the most popular Kubernetes package manager. Main points: updated template engine and preserved compatibility with Helm 3 charts. If you use Helm for deploy — here's what's coming in the ecosystem.
What's Changing
Improved install and upgrade performance: helm install and helm upgrade run faster on large charts. Dependency and hook handling refined — fewer hangs with complex dependency trees. The CLI stays familiar for Helm 3 users — same commands, same flags.
Backward Compatibility
Existing charts and values should work unchanged. Migration from Helm 3 to 4 is planned as a stepwise upgrade without chart format changes. Important for teams with dozens of internal charts: no full rewrite.
Practical Guidance
Beta is for testing in non-production envs. Try Helm 4 on dev or staging first, run typical scenarios (install, upgrade, rollback). Stable Helm 4 is expected in the coming months after the community validates the beta on real workloads. For those who prefer deploy without Helm, see Kubernetes Without Helm.