- Fixed an issue in register-gen where imports for k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime and k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/runtime/schema were missing. ([#130392](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/130392), [@mrIncompetent](https://github.com/mrIncompetent)) [SIG API Machinery]

  Noteable changes:
  1. Populate new `RuntimeHandler` field in CRI's `ImageSpec` struct during image pulls from container runtimes.
  2. Pass `runtimeHandler` field in `RemoveImage()` call to container runtime in `kubelet`'s image garbage collection. ([#121456](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121456), [@kiashok](https://github.com/kiashok))

- With the `KubeletCgroupDriverFromCRI` feature gate enabled and sufficiently new version of a container
  runtime, kubelet automatically detects the cgroup driver config from the container runtime, eliminating

### SIG Node

- DRA: The scheduler plugin prevented abnormal filter runtimes by timing out after 10 seconds. This was configurable via the plugin configuration's `FilterTimeout`. Setting it to zero disabled the timeout and restored the behavior of Kubernetes <= 1.33. ([#132033](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132033),...

* Improve monitoring and error reporting

#### Container Runtime Interface (CRI)

* [alpha] Add a CRI validation test suite and CRI command-line tools. ([#292](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/292), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

* [stable] [cri-o](https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/cri-o): CRI implementation for OCI-based runtimes [[@mrunalp](https://github.com/mrunalp)]

      - [**CoreDNS**](#coredns)
      - [**Other**](#other-4)
    - [**Node**](#node-3)
      - [**Pod API**](#pod-api)
      - [**Hardware Accelerators**](#hardware-accelerators)
      - [**Container Runtime**](#container-runtime)
      - [**Kubelet**](#kubelet)
        - [**Other**](#other-5)
    - [**OpenStack**](#openstack-2)
    - [**Scheduling**](#scheduling-2)
      - [**Hardware Accelerators**](#hardware-accelerators-1)

- Fixed a bug where init containers may fail to start due to a temporary container runtime failure. ([#127213](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/127213), [@SergeyKanzhelev](https://github.com/SergeyKanzhelev)) [SIG Node]

### Node

- The dockershim container runtime now accepts the `docker` runtime handler from a RuntimeClass. ([#78323](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78323), [@tallclair](https://github.com/tallclair))

* If a pod has a running instance, the stats of its previously terminated instances will not show up in the kubelet summary stats any more for CRI runtimes like containerd and cri-o. ([#77426](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/77426), [@Random-Liu](https://github.com/Random-Liu))