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Spring for Apache Kafka 4.1.0, 4.0.6, and 3.3.16 Available

Releases | Soby Chacko | June 09, 2026 | 3 min read | ...

On behalf of the team and everyone who contributed, we are pleased to announce that Spring for Apache Kafka 4.1.0, 4.0.6, and 3.3.16 have been released. We extend our gratitude to all contributors who made these releases possible.

Spring for Apache Kafka 4.1.0 GA

This is the first GA release of the 4.1.x generation. If you are coming from 4.0.x, the What's New in 4.1 Since 4.0 chapter of the reference manual is the best starting point for a full picture of the new features and changes.

The feature set was built up progressively across the milestones and release candidate. For the detailed narrative on each phase, refer to the prior release blogs in the 4.1.x line:

The GA release concentrates on stabilization, with a focused set of bug fixes on top of RC1.

What's New Since RC1

CVEs fixed in this release

This release fixes the following CVEs:

Batch listener fixes

BatchListenerFailedException silently commits offsets (#4436): Fixed a correctness issue where BatchListenerFailedException could cause offsets for unprocessed records in a BatchMessageListener to be committed silently instead of being retried.
DefaultAfterRollbackProcessor seek fix (#4439): DefaultAfterRollbackProcessor for batch listeners consuming ConsumerRecords now correctly seeks the consumer on rollback, preventing records from being silently skipped.
setBackOffFunction for batch processing (#4455): The setBackOffFunction method now applies uniformly to batch listeners as well as record listeners.

Container and consumer fixes

ackMode=COUNT_TIME timing fix (#4444): KafkaMessageListenerContainer now correctly evaluates the elapsed time component when ackMode is COUNT_TIME, ensuring acknowledgments are not delayed indefinitely.
Non-string properties in DefaultConsumerFactory (#4384): Resolved inconsistent handling of non-string values in the Properties argument passed to DefaultConsumerFactory::createKafkaConsumer.
Value serializer classloader handling (#4442): Fixed differing behavior for value serializer type mappings when the same configuration was used across different classloaders.

Kafka Streams fixes

NPE in StreamsBuilderFactoryBean (#4434): Resolved a NullPointerException that occurred when no explicit properties were defined for StreamsBuilderFactoryBean.
KafkaStreamsDeadLetterDestinationResolver (#4430): Fixed incorrect key, value, and headers being passed to KafkaStreamsDeadLetterDestinationResolver during error routing.

Dependency upgrades

Kafka client has been updated to 4.2.1, along with maintenance bumps for Jackson, Kotlin, and slf4j.

4.0.6 and 3.3.16 (patch releases)

4.0.6 backports the DefaultConsumerFactory non-string properties fix, the DefaultAfterRollbackProcessor seek issue, the StreamsBuilderFactoryBean NPE, and the value serializer classloader fix. It also includes a documentation clarification that Spring Boot 4 projects require the spring-boot-starter-kafka dependency explicitly, along with a slf4j bump.

3.3.16 backports the DefaultConsumerFactory non-string properties fix, the StreamsBuilderFactoryBean NPE, and the value serializer classloader fix, together with Jackson maintenance updates.

Release notes

More details along with any dependency updates and other changes can be found in the release notes.

Spring Boot integration

Spring Kafka 4.1.0 will be integrated into Spring Boot 4.1.0. Spring Kafka 4.0.6 will be integrated into Spring Boot 4.0.7. Spring Kafka 3.3.16 will be integrated into Spring Boot 3.5.15.

Community feedback

Feedback and issue reports are welcome on GitHub.

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