You can now use the Managed Service for Apache Kafka remote MCP server to enable LLM agents to create and manage your Kafka clusters and Kafka Connect clusters, as well as create and manage related resources such as topics, consumer groups, connectors, and ACLs.

This feature is in Preview.

Using gcloud or the REST API, you can now view the following information about a Managed Service for Apache Kafka cluster:

• Broker node IDs and indexes
• The zones where brokers are located
• The Kafka version that the cluster is running

For more information, see View a Kafka cluster.

The additionalSubnets field in the ConnectNetworkConfig REST API resource is deprecated. Connect cluster workers can reach any endpoint that is accessible from primarySubnet subnetwork.

Change

Kafka Connect cluster workers can now reach any endpoint that is accessible from the worker (primary) subnetwork. Previously, to extend worker connectivity to other subnets within the same VPC network, you had to specify these subnets in the cluster configuration. The additionalSubnets field is now ignored, and this configuration setting has been removed from the Google Cloud console. For more information, see Worker (primary) subnet.

Support for Kafka Connect is now generally available (GA). Kafka Connect lets you stream data at scale between Managed Service for Apache Kafka clusters and other systems, such as external Kafka deployments, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or Pub/Sub. For more information, see Kafka Connect overview.

Integration with VPC Service Controls is generally available (GA).

Managed Service for Apache Kafka now supports Organization Policy Service custom constraints. Custom constraints allow you to restrict specific operations on Managed Service for Apache Kafka resources.

General availability: You can now use mutual TLS (mTLS) for certificate-based authentication with your Managed Service for Apache Kafka brokers. This feature is available for clusters created after June 24, 2025. For more information, see Authentication types for Kafka brokers.

Integration with VPC Service Controls is in preview.

Managed Service for Apache Kafka now supports HIPAA Compliance on Google Cloud.

The Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka service creates new brokers automatically based on the memory and vCPU configuration of the cluster. When you update a cluster's size, the service now performs a safety check to verify that individual brokers have sufficient capacity for their portion of the traffic. For more information, see Update the memory and vCPUs.

General availability: Metrics for all Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka resources are now available, with some exceptions. Exceptions include the request_count and topic_error_count metrics for Kafka clusters and Kafka Connect connectors. For a list of supported metrics, see Metrics for Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka.

Public preview: Google Managed Service for Apache Kafka now offers schema registry support. For more information about the feature, see the schema registry overview or get started with an Avro producer in Java.

General availability: Managed Service for Apache Kafka now supports configuring standard Apache Kafka ACLs using REST, gRPC, and gcloud CLI. For more information, see Access control with IAM and Kafka ACLs.

Public preview: Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka now supports Kafka Connect. Kafka Connect provides a curated set of built-in connector plugins hosted in Connect clusters. Configure these connector plugins to create connectors that let you stream data at scale between Managed Service for Apache Kafka clusters and other systems, such as external Kafka deployments, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or Pub/Sub. For more information, see Kafka Connect overview.

Documentation is now available to help you choose between Pub/Sub and Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka. The comparison is based on factors such as operational ease, portability, existing Kafka setup, and integration with other Google Cloud products. A detailed feature comparison table is also included. For more information, see Choose Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka or Pub/Sub.

Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka now supports moving open source Kafka data to Google Cloud using various Dataflow templates. You can move Kafka data to Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka, BigQuery, and Cloud Storage. For more information about these data movement use cases, see Move Kafka data in Google Cloud.

Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka is now in General Availability (GA).

Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka clusters now run on Apache Kafka version 3.7.1.

Apache Kafka for BigQuery is now called Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka.

Client library samples for Python are now added to all relevant pages. For more information, see Apache Kafka for BigQuery client libraries.

Terraform samples are now available for creating clusters and topics. For more information, see Provision Apache Kafka for BigQuery resources with Terraform.

Client library samples for Java and Go are now added to all relevant pages. For more information, see Apache Kafka for BigQuery client libraries.