Apache Kafka 4.0 has been released, marking a significant milestone in the project's evolution. The new release operates entirely without Apache ZooKeeper, simplifying deployment and management, and reducing operational overhead, scalability, and administrative tasks. This change is made possible by running in KRaft mode by default. Additionally, Kafka 4.0 introduces a powerful new consumer group protocol (KIP-848) that significantly improves rebalance performance, reducing downtime and latency. The release also brings the general availability of Queues for Kafka (KIP-932), enabling Kafka to support traditional queue semantics directly. Furthermore, Kafka 4.0 requires Java 11 for clients and Java 17 for brokers, tools, and Connect. Other notable features include improved consumer group administration, enhanced Kafka Streams operator metrics, and the removal of old client protocol API versions in Kafka 4.0. The release is a result of community efforts, with over 175 contributors involved.