API

• Stabilize complex attributes (#7973)
• Limit init valid hex array to range that can be true (#7809)

Extensions

• Trace propagators: Deprecate OtTracePropagator (#8020)
• Trace propagators: Deprecate JaegerPropagator (#8019)

SDK

• Move io.opentelemetry.sdk.internal to io.opentelemetry.sdk.common.internal (#8003)
• Always return ExtendedOpenTelemetry when incubator is available (#7991)

Traces

• Fix memory leak in SdkSpan#spanEndingThread (#7984)

Metrics

• Rework and publish metric benchmarks (#8000)
• Update LongLastValueAggregator algo to avoid allocations (#8017)

Testing

• Fix OTel JUnit5 Extension cleanup when using Nested test classes (#7999)
• Add assertion support for Span hasException(null) (#8033)

Exporters

• DEPRECATION: opentelemetry-exporter-zipkin is now deprecated with the last release planned for 1.65.0 (August 2026) (#7974)
• Refactor http, grpc senders and promote to public API (#7782)

Extensions

• Jaeger remote sampler: Remove unused code (#7970)
• Incubator: Add AlwaysRecordSampler (#7877)

Project tooling

• Align generate release contributors (#8023)

🙇 Thank you

This release was possible thanks to the following contributors who shared their brilliant ideas and awesome pull requests:

@austince @baolongnt @blueswhisper @bogdandrutu @breedx-splk @brunobat @gerolf-da @jack-berg @jaydeluca @jkwatson @laurit @majanjua-amzn @michaeljohnalbers @ps-mir @trask @tylerbenson @zeitlinger