Release 1.20

cert-manager is the easiest way to automatically manage certificates in Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.

This release focuses on adding support for the new ListenerSet resource, as well as features like Azure Private Zones in the DNS01 issuer and support for the NetworkPolicy resource.

Be sure to review all new features and changes below, and read the full release notes carefully before upgrading.

Major Themes

Network Policy

The cert-manager Helm chart now allows you to create NetworkPolicy resources for all the cert-manager Deployments. This makes it easier to follow best practices when deploying cert-manager in production.

ListenerSet and parentRef override

cert-manager 1.20 now supports ListenerSet as part of its integration with Gateway API. It was already possible to get cert-manager to create a Certificate resource by annotating an Ingress or Gateway resource, but with this release, cert-manager can now also create Certificates by annotating a ListenerSet resource. For context, ListenerSet is a new resource in Gateway API that was made stable in Gateway API 1.5. This is an alpha feature that is disabled by default, but it can be enabled with the ListenerSet feature gate. To learn more about this feature, check out the ListenerSet documentation.

Another improvement we have made is the possibility to leave the parentRefs field empty on the Issuer and ClusterIssuer; it will be automatically guessed by cert-manager.

Azure DNS Private Zones for DNS-01

cert-manager 1.20 adds support for Azure DNS Private Zones in the DNS01 issuer. This means that you can now use cert-manager to issue certificates for domains that are hosted in Azure DNS Private Zones, which are not accessible from the public internet. All you have to do to use this feature is to set the new zoneType field:

kind: Issuer
metadata:
  name: example-issuer
spec:
  acme:
    solvers:
    - dns01:
        azureDNS:
          zoneType: AzurePrivateZone # <- this field.

More details are available in the PR: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/pull/8494.

Community

As always, we'd like to thank all of the community members who helped in this release cycle, including all below who merged a PR and anyone that helped by commenting on issues, testing, or getting involved in cert-manager meetings. We're lucky to have you involved.

A special thanks to:

• @LiquidPL
• @mathieu
• @mikeluttikhuis
• @iossifbenbassat123
• @shubham14bajpai
• @changgesi
• @eleanor
• @jaxels10
• @WinterCabbage
• @calm329
• @majiayu000
• @FelixPhipps
• @SlashNephy
• @dancmeyers
• @alviss7
• @tkna
• @robertlestak

...for their contributions, comments and support!

Also, thanks to the cert-manager maintainer team for their help in this release:

• @SgtCoDFish
• @ThatsMrTalbot
• @erikgb
• @inteon
• @maelvls
• @munnerz
• @wallrj
• @hjoshi123 who just joined the team!

And finally, thanks to the cert-manager steering committee for their feedback in this release cycle:

• @FlorianLiebhart
• @TrilokGeer
• @ianarsenault
• @ssyno

v1.20.0

Changes since v1.19.0:

Feature

• Add a set of flags to permit setting NetworkPolicy across all deployed containers. Remove redundant global IP ranges from example policies. (#8370, @jcpunk)
• Add selectable fields to custom resource definitions for .spec.issuerRef.{group, kind, name} (#8256, @tareksha)
• Add support for specifying imagePullSecrets in the startupapicheck-job Helm template to enable pulling images from private registries. (#8186, @mathieu-clnk)
• Added extraContainers helm chart value, allowing the deployment of arbitrary sidecar containers within the cert-manager operator pod. This can be used to support, for e.g., AWS IAM Roles Anywhere for Route53 dns01 verification. (#8355, @dancmeyers)
• Added parentRef override annotations on the Certificate resource. (#8518, @hjoshi123)
• Added support for azure private zones for dns01 issuer. (#8494, @hjoshi123)
• Added support for configuring PEM decoding size limits, allowing operators to handle larger certificates and keys. (#7642, @robertlestak)
• Added support for unhealthyPodEvictionPolicy in PodDisruptionBudget (#7728, @jcpunk)
• For Venafi provider, read venafi.cert-manager.io/custom-fields annotation on Issuer/ClusterIssuer and use it as base with override/append capabilities on Certificate level. (#8301, @k0da)
• Improve error message when CA issuers are misconfigured to use a clashing secret name (#8374, @majiayu000)
• Introduce a new Ingress annotation acme.cert-manager.io/http01-ingress-ingressclassname to override http01.ingress.ingressClassName field in HTTP-01 challenge solvers. (#8244, @lunarwhite)
• Update global.nodeSelector to helm chart to perform a merge and allow for a single nodeSelector to be set across all services. (#8195, @StingRayZA)
• Vault issuers will now include the Vault server address as one of the default audiences on generated service account tokens. (#8228, @terinjokes)
• Added experimental XListenerSet feature gate ( #8394, @hjoshi123)
• Promoting xlistenerset feature gate to listenerset (#8501, @hjoshi123)

Documentation

• Add GWAPI documentation to NOTES.TXT in helm chart (#8353, @jaxels10)

Bug or Regression

• Adds logs for cases when acme server returns us a fatal error in the order controller (#8199, @Peac36)
• BUGFIX: in case kind or group in the issuerRef of a Certificate was omitted, upgrading to v1.19.x incorrectly caused the certificate to be renewed (#8160, @inteon)
• Changes to the Duration and RenewBefore annotations on ingress and gateway-api resources will now trigger certificate updates. (#8232, @eleanor-merry)
• Fix an issue where ACME challenge TXT records are not cleaned up when there are many resource records in CloudDNS. (#8456, @tkna)
• Fix unregulated retries with the DigitalOcean DNS-01 solver Add full detailed DNS-01 errors to the events attached to the Challenge, for easier debugging (#8221, @wallrj-cyberark)
• Fixed an infinite re-issuance loop that could occur when an issuer returns a certificate with a public key that doesn't match the CSR. The issuing controller now validates the certificate before storing it and fails with backoff on mismatch. (#8403, @calm329)
• Fixed an issue where HTTP-01 challenges failed when the Host header contains an IPv6 address. This means that users can now issue IP address certificates for IPv6 address subjects. (#8424, @SlashNephy)
• Fixed the HTTP-01 Gateway solver creating invalid HTTPRoutes by not setting spec.hostnames when the challenge DNSName is an IP address. (#8443, @alviss7)
• Revert API defaults for issuer reference kind and group introduced in 0.19.0 (#8173, @erikgb)
• Security (MODERATE): Fix a potential panic in the cert-manager controller when a DNS response in an unexpected order was cached. If an attacker was able to modify DNS responses (or if they controlled the DNS server) it was possible to cause denial of service for the cert-manager controller. (#8469, @SgtCoDFish)
• Update Go to v1.25.5 to fix CVE-2025-61727 and CVE-2025-61729 (#8290, @octo-sts[bot])
• When Prometheus monitoring is enabled, the metrics label is now set to the intended value of cert-manager. Previously, it was set depending on various factors (namespace cert-manager is installed in and/or Helm release name). (#8162, @LiquidPL)

Other (Cleanup or Flake)

• Promoted the OtherNames feature to Beta and enabled it by default (#8288, @wallrj-cyberark)
• Rebranding of the Venafi Issuer to CyberArk (#8215, @iossifbenbassat123)
• Switched to SSA for challenge finalizer updates (#8519, @inteon)
• The default container user (UID) is now 65532 (previously 1000) and the default container group (GID) is now 65532 (previously 0) (#8408, @wallrj-cyberark)
• The feature-gate DefaultPrivateKeyRotationPolicyAlways moved from Beta to GA and can no longer be disabled. (#8287, @wallrj-cyberark)
• Update cert-manager's ACME client, forked from golang/x/crypto (#8268, @SgtCoDFish)
• Use the latest version of Kyverno (1.16.2) in the best-practice installation tests (#8389, @wallrj-cyberark)
• We stopped testing with Contour due to it not supporting the new XListenerSet resource, and moved to kgateway. (#8426, @hjoshi123)