As announced during Atlanta’s KubeCon North America 2025, Helm 4 is finally available!
Helm v4 is a significant project milestone that introduces a series of architectural changes, enhanced features, and new patterns, while maintaining backward compatibility for existing charts. For a comprehensive understanding of all the details, we encourage you to consult the Official Helm 4 Overview.
Is Helm 4 compatible with the Bitnami Secure Images (BSI) charts catalog?
While Helm v4 has announced a Charts v3 specification in its roadmap, it is not yet available. Charts currently using the v2 specification, like those in the BSI charts catalog, will continue to be fully supported.
To ensure compatibility with both Helm v3 and v4, BSI charts will continue to be offered according to the current specification. Also, the Bitnami team took a proactive approach, testing our entire catalog with pre-release builds even before the official announcement. That means the BSI Helm charts are validated with a Helm v4 version for deploying the solutions in multiple Kubernetes versions and platforms, like VKS, EKS, AKS, GKE, and OpenShift.
Will the BSI charts catalog adopt the charts v3 spec?
Upon the release of the new specification, we will assess its improvements and any implications for backwards compatibility. This evaluation will inform our strategy with a compromise of keeping the compatibility with previous versions, but adopting the new v3 spec when possible.
Should BSI users upgrade to Helm 4?
We highly encourage you to start evaluating this significant evolution of the project, given that there are several enhancements you can take advantage of, including:
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A new plugin system based on WebAssembly.
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New post-rendering possibilities thanks to post-renderer plugins.
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Better resource monitoring thanks to the new kstatus watcher.
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Content-based caching.
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Enhanced OCI/registry support (e.g. OCI digest support).
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Improved logs.
Does Helm Distribution Plugin work with Helm 4?
For many BSI customers, synchronizing BSI charts and their associated container images to custom registries is achieved using tools like the Helm Distribution Plugin or charts-syncer. Customers can be confident that these tools are fully compatible with Helm v4, so this update will not cause any compatibility issues.
Conclusions
The introduction of Helm v4 is a clear indication that the project maintainers and the broader community are committed to continuous improvement, ensuring that Helm remains the vital, future-proof component of the Kubernetes ecosystem for years to come.
This is excellent news for us as charts maintainers. The evolution of BSI charts will align with the project's progress, ensuring backwards compatibility and upholding our commitment. We guarantee software supply chain security by continuously delivering production-ready open source software in hardened images, characterized by minimal CVEs and transparent reliability.
Bitnami Secure Images offers enterprise support for over 110 Helm charts, which package industry-leading open source projects. These charts are designed to work with Bitnami’s hardened, near-zero CVE container images. Contact us today to learn more about Bitnami Secure Images.