- Fixes an issue that can result in namespaced custom resources being orphaned when their namespace is deleted, if the CRD defining the custom resource is removed concurrently with namespaces being deleted, then recreated. ([#93790](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/93790), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt)) [SIG API Machinery and Apps]

## Changelog since v1.18.14

## Changes by Kind

### Bug or Regression

- Fix Azure file share not deleted issue when the namespace is deleted ([#97417](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97417), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Storage]

### CVE-2025-5187: Nodes can delete themselves by adding an OwnerReference

 and is deleted after 24 hours by default to limit the exposure of the
 valuable credential. You can create a new Bootstrap Token with
 `kubeadm token create` or make the default token permanently valid by specifying
 `--token-ttl 0` to `kubeadm init`. The default token can later be deleted with
 `kubeadm token delete`.

* Add support for finalizers in federated configmaps (deletes configmaps from underlying clusters). ([#40464](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/40464), [@csbell](https://github.com/csbell))

- NodeLifecycleController: When node lease feature is enabled, node lease will be deleted when the corresponding node is deleted. ([#70034](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/70034), [@wangzhen127](https://github.com/wangzhen127))

* Updating apiserver to return UID of the deleted resource. Clients can use this UID to verify that the resource was deleted or waiting for finalizers. ([#45600](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/45600), [@nikhiljindal](https://github.com/nikhiljindal))

- Give terminal phase correctly to all pods that will not be restarted. 

  In particular, assign Failed phase to pods which are deleted while pending. Also, assign a terminal 
  phase (Succeeded or Failed, depending on the exit statuses of the pod containers) to pods which
  are deleted while running.
  
  This fixes the issue for jobs using pod failure policy (with JobPodFailurePolicy and PodDisruptionConditions 

- To avoid soft-deleted pods incorrectly affecting scale up replica count calculations, the HPA controller will stop counting soft-deleted pods for scaling purposes. ([#67067](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67067), [@moonek](https://github.com/moonek))

  1. For volumes provisioned/deleted via external provisioner/deleter, `storage_operation_duration_seconds` will NOT wait for the external operation to be done before reporting latency metric (effectively close to 0). This will be fixed by using `volume_operation_total_seconds` instead