- Add admission plugin that validates PodGroup resources reference an existing Workload and match the declared PodGroupTemplate spec. ([#137464](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/137464), [@helayoty](https://github.com/helayoty)) [SIG API Machinery, Apps, Auth, CLI, Cloud Provider, Etcd, Node, Scheduling and Testing]

- Introduce v1alpha1 API for mutating admission policies, enabling extensible admission control via CEL expressions (KEP  3962: Mutating Admission Policies). To use, enable the `MutatingAdmissionPolicy` feature...

secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets` annotation are used together with ephemeral containers.

**Note**: This only impacts the cluster if the ServiceAccount admission plugin is used (most cluster should have this on by default as recommended in https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#serviceaccount), the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets`...

- Replaced deprecated package `k8s.io/utils/pointer` with `k8s.io/utils/ptr` for the pod-security-admission admissiontests. ([#132742](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132742), [@PatrickLaabs](https://github.com/PatrickLaabs))

- The deprecated `SecurityContextDeny` admission plugin, which has been deprecated since `v1.27`, has been removed. It is recommended to use the Pod Security Admission plugin instead, which has been available since v1.25. Refer to the [Kubernetes documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#securitycontextdeny) for more information.

This release contains changes that address the following vulnerabilities:

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

- Removed admission plugin `PersistentVolumeLabel`. Please use https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cloud-pv-admission-labeler instead if you need a similar functionality. ([#124505](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124505), [@jsafrane](https://github.com/jsafrane)) [SIG API Machinery, Auth and Storage]...

  - A `component-helpers` library for feature registration and inference.
  - A `NodeDeclaredFeatures` scheduler plugin to match pods with nodes that provide required features.
  - A `NodeDeclaredFeatureValidator` admission plugin to validate pod updates against a node's declared features. ([#133389](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/133389), [@pravk03](https://github.com/pravk03)) [SIG API Machinery, Apps, Node, Release, Scheduling and Testing]

  - [Important Security Information](#important-security-information-1)
    - [CVE-2024-3177: Bypassing mountable secrets policy imposed by the ServiceAccount admission plugin](#cve-2024-3177-bypassing-mountable-secrets-policy-imposed-by-the-serviceaccount-admission-plugin)
  - [Changes by Kind](#changes-by-kind-6)
    - [Feature](#feature-4)
    - [Bug or Regression](#bug-or-regression-6)
  - [Dependencies](#dependencies-6)