What’s new with F5
Stay current on the latest F5 innovations announced and released to help you deliver, secure, and protect your apps and APIs anywhere.
Updated: August 2026
Explore the latest F5 app delivery and security announcements
Your official source for updates across our application delivery, security, and XOps portfolio. We cover key innovations in AI security, multicloud networking, and operational efficiency for BIG-IP and Kubernetes environments. Learn about new capabilities that help you secure applications and APIs everywhere.
Top trending news from F5
Awards and recognition in the industry
Product releases and announcements
Application delivery
BIG-IP v21.1 (May 6, 2026):
Future-proof your organization against the next generation of security challenges. BIG-IP v21.1 expands your cryptographic defenses with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) ciphers and quantum-resistant VPN tunneling. The release also introduces native HTTP/3 support and optimized traffic management capabilities for AI agents, protecting your data today and tomorrow.
F5 BIG-IP Automation Toolchain (AS3 3.57 & DO 1.49) (June 1, 2026):
Accelerate your infrastructure deployment with highly reliable, automated provisioning. The latest updates to Application Services 3 (3.57) and Declarative Onboarding (1.49) streamline application service automation and device clustering. These releases introduce enhanced administrative controls over user management, more stable certificate lifecycle operations, and crucial defect resolutions to help teams consistently scale services across BIG-IP environments.
F5 BIG-IP Container Ingress Services 2.20.4 (June 11, 2026):
Bridge the gap between your cloud-native applications and robust enterprise networking. F5 BIG-IP CIS 2.20.4 aligns Kubernetes and OpenShift ingress with current platform versions while strengthening BIG-IP governance. This release introduces new Custom Resource Definition (CRD) capabilities for consistent policy and TLS reuse, tighter partition controls, richer analytics, and an updated IPAM controller for highly resilient operations.
BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition 2.3 (April 2026):
Secure and scale your service provider environments with the speed of cloud-native agility. BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition 2.3 expands F5’s Kubernetes-native networking capabilities with MPLS provider-edge support, native UDP/TCP load balancing, NVIDIA BlueField DPU acceleration, and subscriber-aware policy enforcement. The release also introduces VRF-aware security policies, multi-region GSLB, BBRv2 congestion control, and enhanced diagnostics.
BIG-IP eBPF Observability 3.0 (July 2026):
Troubleshoot complex application issues in seconds, not hours. BIG-IP eBPF Observability 3.0 leverages highly efficient, low-overhead eBPF data collection to deliver deep, native Kubernetes network visibility. With advanced protocol parsing and streamlined cluster management, you can keep your environments running at peak performance.
BIG-IP DNS (v21.1) (May 6, 2026):
Strengthen DNS security and policy enforcement with BIG-IP DNS v21.1 by adding Multiple Response Policy Zone (RPZ) Feed Zones, giving teams more control over DNS resolution behavior and protection against undesirable or malicious destinations.
BIG-IP LTM (v21.1) (May 6, 2026):
Modernize and secure app delivery with BIG-IP LTM v21.1, featuring TLS 1.3/DTLS 1.2 enabled by default, ACMEv2 certificate renewal automation, and tighter control for mTLS server handling. Improve uptime and operational confidence with SNAT IP source monitors, configurable forceful connection termination (delay timeout) for smoother maintenance, more reliable stateful MCP sessions for LLM agents, and the ability to change the default “admin” username without breaking iControl REST/TMSH/basic auth workflows.
F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes 2.3.0 (April 2026):
Unlock the true potential of your modern AI deployments with production-ready optimization. F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes 2.3.0 introduces intelligent LLM routing, comprehensive token governance, and advanced load balancing designed specifically for AI workloads. Maximize performance and securely scale your Kubernetes clusters for high-demand applications.
F5 BIG-IQ Centralized Management 8.4.2 (May 28, 2026):
Simplify your security posture and scale your infrastructure with seamless centralized control. BIG-IQ 8.4.2 lowers your exposure to known vulnerabilities via TMOS upgrades and delivers crucial interoperability for BIG-IP v21.1. The release also adds Venafi Cloud (CyberArk) support, validated standalone OpenShift Virtualization deployments, and expanded management capabilities for BIG-IP AFM and SSL Orchestrator.
F5 Distributed Cloud CDN (July 21, 2026):
Deliver lightning-fast experiences to your users while driving down operational costs. F5 Distributed Cloud CDN introduces one-click enablement natively integrated into your HTTP load balancers, slashing latency and lowering origin server load. Dramatically reduce your cloud egress fees with a single toggle.
Distributed Cloud DNS (July 21, 2026):
Keep secondary DNS better synchronized during frequent change periods with Distributed Cloud DNS, which now lets admins manually trigger AXFR zone transfers from the Distributed Cloud Console. This helps reduce reliance on rate-limited NOTIFY messages, consolidate updates, and maintain more reliable secondary DNS record consistency.
Distributed Cloud DNS Load Balancer (DNSLB) (June 16, 2026):
Improve global availability and steering accuracy with DNSLB enhancements that add FQDN-based health checks for CNAME pool members, expanding support for apps behind CDN/SaaS CNAMEs. Health checks can include SNI and/or host header so validation reflects the real application behind the hostname—reducing false health signals and improving failover reliability.
F5 Distributed Cloud 2026.2.0 (GA) (July 13, 2026):
Take the complexity out of application and API defense. F5 Distributed Cloud2026.2.0 simplifies your security workflow by introducing AI-assisted risk scoring and deep attack surface mapping. With added one-click CDN configuration, your security team gains the clear visibility needed to stop threats before they escalate.
F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge (CE) (July 12, 2026):
Scale your enterprise deployments with unprecedented speed and stability. Distributed Cloud Customer Edge (CE) now boasts sub-20 second upgrade downtimes, a 9x improvement in deployment success rates, and simplified single-domain registration. Combined with real-time health visibility and proactive monitoring, deploying and managing edge nodes is faster and more reliable than ever.
F5 Gateway Fabric for NGINX Enterprise 2.6 (May 7, 2026):
Deploy container-native web application firewall security directly inside the Kubernetes Gateway API. F5 Gateway Fabric for NGINX Enterprise 2.6 integrates enterprise-grade F5 WAF for NGINX support directly onto Gateways and HTTPRoutes. The release also adds ListenerSet support, client-side mTLS, expanded Kubernetes-native policy controls, and enhanced traffic management capabilities to simplify security and GitOps-driven application delivery.
F5 ingress Controller for NGINX Enterprise 5.5 (May 29, 2026):
Secure your containerized applications and accelerate your migration to enterprise-grade Kubernetes ingress. F5 Ingress Controller for NGINX Enterprise 5.5 introduces External Authentication for Ingress and VirtualServer resources, F5 WAF IP Intelligence, expanded mTLS support, and direct WAF Policy support. It also significantly reduces start-up latency at scale and adds community ingress-nginx-compatible annotations, making it easier than ever to transition seamlessly to F5.
F5 Console for NGINX Enterprise Local Edition 2.22 (April 28, 2026):
Take the complexity out of enterprise-wide WAF administration. F5 Console for NGINX Enterprise Local Edition 2.22 simplifies how you manage F5 WAF for NGINX with new GUI-driven log profile management, policy versioning, deployment bundle generation, and centralized certificate management. These operational enhancements reduce manual configurations, strengthen security compliance, and ensure consistent protection across all your enterprise and Kubernetes environments.
F5 NGINX Enterprise Edition 37.0 (May 18, 2026):
Streamline your application delivery and simplify your enterprise automation. F5 NGINX Enterprise Edition 37.0 introduces agentic observability for AI agent (MCP) traffic, a new Control API for remote configuration management, JSON-formatted error logging with custom variables, and high-fidelity upstream latency metrics. This release also marks the launch of F5 NGINX Enterprise Edition’s Long-Term Support (LTS) model, giving your team a predictable product lifecycle and extended operational support.
F5 Console for NGINX Enterprise (April to June releases):
Unify your security operations and accelerate your WAF deployments through a single pane of glass. The F5 Console for NGINX Enterprise update introduces an intuitive Security Dashboard that helps SecOps teams identify, investigate, and understand security events in the context of active policies, signatures, and applications. Armed with GUI-based Log Profile Management and pre-configured log profiles, you can eliminate configuration complexity and immediately elevate your observability.
F5 Application Delivery Service (April to June releases):
Simplify your multicloud app delivery and secure your public cloud workloads without infrastructure overhead. Formerly known as NGINXaaS, F5 Application Delivery Service eliminates the burden of deploying, maintaining, and patching underlying infrastructure. Instantly shield your applications from OWASP Top 10 threats in Google Cloud using integrated F5 WAF, or gain early deployment insights inside AWS through our active Early Availability program.
Application security
F5 AI Guardrails with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails (July 29, 2026):
Scale your enterprise AI securely with centralized, consistent policy enforcement. The integration of F5 AI Guardrails with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails separates security inspection from the AI framework, allowing you to centrally detect prompt injections, PII exposure, and data leakage without modifying application code. Maintain independent control over governance while giving your developers the freedom to build fast.
F5 AI Security Platform & SurePath AI (June 22, 2026):
Take continuous, absolute control over your enterprise AI risk and eliminate shadow AI. The new F5 AI Security Platform, enhanced by the acquisition of SurePath AI, delivers frictionless network-based AI discovery, intent classification, and runtime protection for models, agents, and APIs. Seamlessly govern, discover, test, and protect your AI workloads across on-premises, air-gapped, and multicloud environments without compromising data sovereignty.
v10.31.0 (May 21, 2026):
Protect your AI applications in real time without sacrificing a millisecond of user experience. This F5 AI Guardrails SaaS update upgrades the core detection model to deliver up to 1.6x greater throughput and a massive 9x larger context window. With a 4% increase in threat detection accuracy, you can keep your digital interactions safe and fluid.
v10.42.6 (June 17, 2026):
Deliver seamless, safe, and compliant multilingual interactions to a global audience. This F5 AI Guardrails update introduces real-time, token-by-token inspection for streaming models alongside native, out-of-the-box Spanish PII detection. Shield sensitive customer data from being leaked in chat responses across broader deployments.
Read more about the features ›
v10.63.0 (July 9, 2026):
Expand your security perimeter and protect your brand's reputation globally. The July F5 AI Guardrails release features proactive two-way scanning to deeply inspect both inbound prompts and outbound model responses. Coupled with new out-of-the-box French and Japanese language support, you can keep international deployments secure and compliant.
v10.10.4 (April 16, 2026):
Deploy your artificial intelligence models with absolute confidence. The F5 AI Red Team SaaS April release introduces a comprehensive AI Security Index leaderboard, delivering instant, transparent visibility into the vulnerabilities and attack success rates of popular models tested monthly. Mitigate risks before they affect your business.
v10.42.6 (June 17, 2026):
Tailor your AI vulnerability testing to the unique requirements of your business. The June F5 AI Red Team update introduces a user-configurable refusal checker API, allowing you to customize evaluation parameters for specific environments. Ensure your security testing results are highly accurate, relevant, and aligned with your compliance policies.
F5 AI Gateway (August 18, 2026):
Optimize the economics and governance of your enterprise AI with a single, agentic-ready control point. F5 AI Gateway gives security and operations teams unified visibility to eliminate vendor sprawl and reduce token spend by 30–60% through smart routing, semantic caching, and GPU-aware load balancing. It provides centralized AI guardrails to inspect traffic and block threats, while delivering granular access controls that limit AI agents to only authorized enterprise resources. Take control of your AI ecosystem.
F5 Distributed Cloud API Security (July 12, 2026):
Protect your most critical digital assets with pinpoint accuracy. This release supercharges your threat detection with expanded BOLA (API1) and BOPLA (API3) coverage, tracking for excessive resource usage (API4), and automated discovery of sensitive business-flow abuse (API6). With continuous drift detection for external redirects (API10), per-domain schema exports, and new BIG-IP integration metrics, you gain comprehensive visibility into your entire API ecosystem.
F5 API Security Local Edition 1.1.1 (July 2, 2026):
Gain complete control over your on-premises API infrastructure. F5 API Security Local Edition seamlessly integrates with BIG-IP to automatically discover undocumented endpoints, detect shadow and zombie APIs, and enforce strict schema compliance within your local environment. Armed with intelligent risk scoring and comprehensive dashboards, you can secure your digital supply chain wherever your apps reside.
F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense with Agentic AI Protection (EA) (May 29, 2026):
Reclaim control over your automated web traffic. The EA release of F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense with Agentic AI Protection empowers you to detect, classify, and manage automated interactions in real time. Confidently welcome trusted search crawlers while slamming the door on malicious, unauthorized scraping bots.
F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense SSE 5.2 (GA) (May 29, 2026):
Build an ironclad defense against sophisticated automated threats. F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense SSE 5.2 strengthens your automated traffic security infrastructure with upgraded device identification, tighter access controls, and highly resilient telemetry. Ensure your infrastructure remains stable, reliable, and invisible to legitimate users.
F5 WAF for Distributed Cloud (July 12, 2026):
Take the guesswork out of threat prioritization. The latest Distributed Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) update introduces AI-enabled numerical risk scoring for security events. By quantifying the relative severity of each incident, your security teams can effortlessly cut through alert noise and focus instantly on investigating and mitigating the most impactful threats.
F5 Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning (July 12, 2026):
Bridge the gap between vulnerability discovery and active protection. Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning now features Attack Surface Reconnaissance to automatically fingerprint deployed WAFs across your external assets, instantly identifying unprotected endpoints. Coupled with seamless CVE-to-WAF attack signature mapping, your security teams can immediately apply stopgap mitigations without leaving the scanning console.
F5 WAF for NGNIX 5.14.0 GA (July 31, 2026):
Maximize your application speed and maintain rock-solid stability on the OS of your choice. F5 WAF for NGINX 5.14.0 brings full compatibility with Rocky Linux 10 and Ubuntu 26.04 alongside a rewritten, performance-optimized policy compiler. Dramatically reduce CPU latency and memory overhead without sacrificing security.
May 31, 2026: Accelerate your enterprise AI initiatives safely and at scale. Developed in partnership with NVIDIA, this joint solution embeds runtime visibility and inline security directly into your shared AI data storage. Keep sensitive information secure from accidental leakage and malicious threats with NVIDIA-backed infrastructure protection.
XOps
F5 Insight for ADSP v1.2.2 (August 2, 2026):
Strengthen your operational resilience and ensure the long-term stability of your observability platform. F5 Insight for ADSP 1.2.2 is a critical maintenance release that resolves an issue preventing the rotation of self-signed platform certificates, a process essential for maintaining system health. This update prevents future service interruptions, ensuring your teams have continuous, uninterrupted access to the vital application health and security intelligence they rely on.