- Users will no longer see an error for failed events caused due to terminating namespace. ([#114849](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/114849), [@padlar](https://github.com/padlar)) [SIG API Machinery]

* Deployments are updated to use (1) a more stable hashing algorithm (fnv) than the previous one (adler) and (2) a hashing collision avoidance mechanism that will ensure new rollouts will not block on hashing collisions anymore. ([#44774](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/44774), [@kargakis](https://github.com/kargakis))

- Added the `apiserver_watch_cache_read_wait` metric to measure the watch cache impact on request latency.
   ([#123190](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123190), [@padlar](https://github.com/padlar))
- Allowed scheduling framework plugins that implement `io.Closer` to be gracefully closed.
   ([#122498](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122498), [@Gekko0114](https://github.com/Gekko0114))

  previous releases. When this happens, a `LifecycleHTTPFallback` event is recorded
  in the namespace of the pod and a `kubelet_lifecycle_handler_http_fallbacks_total`
  metric in the kubelet is incremented. Cluster administrators can opt out of the
  expanded lifecycle handler capabilities by setting
  `--feature-gates=ConsistentHTTPGetHandlers=false` in `kubelet`.'