* Completed pods should not be hidden when requested by name via `kubectl get`. ([#42216](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/42216), [@smarterclayton](https://github.com/smarterclayton))
  * Improve formatting of EventSource in kubectl get and kubectl describe ([#40073](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/40073), [@matthyx](https://github.com/matthyx))

- Kubectl create service now respects namespace flag ([#101005](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/101005), [@zxh326](https://github.com/zxh326)) [SIG CLI]
- Kubelet: improve the performance when waiting for a synchronization of the node list with the kube-apiserver ([#99336](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99336), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Node]

### Scheduling

- Improved fairness of the scheduling queue by placing pods which are attempted recently behind other pods with the same priority. ([#73700](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/73700), [@denkensk](https://github.com/denkensk))

### Bug or Regression

- Cluster-bootstrap: improve the security of the functions responsible for generation and validation of bootstrap tokens ([#120400](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120400), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle and Security]

- Improved FormatMap: Improves performance by about 4x, or nearly 2x in the worst case ([#112661](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112661), [@aimuz](https://github.com/aimuz)) [SIG Node]

- Improve handling of unmount failures when device may be in-use by another container/process ([#107789](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/107789), [@gnufied](https://github.com/gnufied)) [SIG Storage]

* Do not detach volume if mount in progress ([#71145](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/71145), [@gnufied](https://github.com/gnufied))
* Improve efficiency of preemption logic in clusters with many pending pods. ([#72895](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/72895), [@bsalamat](https://github.com/bsalamat))

- Introduced `Wait(context.Context) error` method in pkg k8s.io/apiserver/pkg/storage/cacher to improve watch cache initialization resilience. ([#125450](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/125450), [@mauri870](https://github.com/mauri870))

- A new `DisableCompression` field (default = `false`) has been added to kubeconfig under cluster info. When set to `true`, clients using the kubeconfig opt out of response compression for all requests to the apiserver. This can help improve list call latencies significantly when client-server network bandwidth is ample (>30MB/s) or if the server is CPU-constrained. ([#112309](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112309), [@shyamjvs](https://github.com/shyamjvs))

   ([#122056](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122056), [@dhenkel92](https://github.com/dhenkel92))
- Improved scheduler performance when no scoring plugins were defined.
   ([#122058](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122058), [@aleksandra-malinowska](https://github.com/aleksandra-malinowska))
- Improved scheduler performance when no scoring plugins were defined.