Apache Polaris (incubating) 1.3 Released: Enhanced Governance and Connectivity

What to expect in version 1.3

Apache Iceberg metrics reporting 

Polaris now has built-in support for Apache Iceberg metrics reporting. For Polaris administrators, this means you can more easily see critical Iceberg metrics directly within Polaris’ own logs. This capability is disabled by default, but you can enable it by setting the Polaris service reporting logger level to INFO.

For advanced users, this functionality can be extended further by implementing a custom reporter to send metrics to external systems for richer analysis and monitoring.

Open Policy Agent (OPA) integration 

Version 1.3 also features a new integration with Open Policy Agent to streamline policy management. This added support enables users to delegate authorization decisions to external policy decision points, making it easier for organizations to centralize policy management and implement more complex authorization rules.

To get started with the Open Policy Agent integration, enable it by setting polaris.authorization.type=opa within your Polaris configuration.

Enhanced catalog federation and security

A substantial set of impactful changes has been made in Polaris 1.3 to enhance catalog federation security capabilities:

• New authentication types have been added for credential vending, and a new configuration is available to explicitly allow credential vending.

• Users will find brand new SigV4 authentication support.

• The community introduced location-based access restrictions that can be used to block credential vending for remote tables outside of allowed location lists.

• Support for AWS Key Management Service (KMS) on a per-catalog-level basis has been added to Polaris, giving users more granular control over encryption. Note that per-table granularity is still in the works.

Generic tables 

An exciting development for all users is the promotion of Generic Tables to general availability (GA). Generic Tables were first introduced in version 1.0, and they are now fully production-ready, offering stable and reliable support for broader data modeling use cases. With Generic Tables, users can leverage Polaris as a catalog for tables beyond Iceberg. Give them a try if you haven’t already!

Rapid-fire updates and enhancements

• New Polaris CLI flag: Following the changes in version 1.2, which added support for S3-compatible storage that doesn’t require STS, the Polaris CLI now includes a dedicated --no-STS flag.

• Relaxed S3 ARN requirements: The requirements around S3 ARN were relaxed within Polaris, enabling it to connect to more non-AWS S3 storage appliances.

• Apache Ozone integration: A new integration with Apache Ozone has been added, complete with a quickstart guide for users looking to get started with this storage provider.

• Python client windows support: The Polaris Python client has been updated to accommodate running on Windows environments.

• Helm deployment checksum: A checksum has been added to the Helm deployment. This means that when the config-map has changed, the deployment will automatically restart to ensure configurations are current.

• Client property alignment: client.region is no longer considered a credential property; this was updated to align with changes made to the Iceberg REST catalog API.

Breaking changes and deprecations

To round out this release, we have a few breaking changes that users should be aware of when planning their upgrade:

• EclipseLink removal: The EclipseLink persistence implementation has been completely removed in this release.

• Request ID header name update: The default request ID header name has been updated from Polaris-Request-Id to X-Request-ID.

• Management endpoint removal: The legacy management endpoints at /metrics and /healthcheck, which were marked as deprecated in version 1.2, have been officially removed. You should now use the standard management endpoints at /q/metrics and /q/health.

Looking ahead

And with that, Polaris 1.3 is in the books — the first Polaris release of 2026! It is our hope that you’ll join us in celebrating the innovative work that the community has done over the course of this past year and get excited for what the rest of 2026 has in store for the project.

Apache® and Apache Polaris are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.