Apache Airflow Helm Chart 1.22.0 Release: Image Updates and OTel Integration

The Apache Airflow project released version 1.22.0 of its official Helm Chart on June 13, 2026. This update introduces a higher baseline for deployment environments by moving the minimum required Helm version to 3.19.0. It also synchronizes the default container image with the recent Airflow 3.2.2 release to ensure platform operators have access to the latest scheduler and worker logic.

The full release notes and downloads are on the GitHub release page.

The shift to Helm 3.19.0 as a minimum version is the most immediate change for CI pipelines and local deployment scripts. While the release notes do not explicitly cite which Helm features triggered this bump, it typically indicates a dependency on improved template rendering or chart dependency management logic in the newer Helm binary. Operators running older clusters or locked down build environments must verify their helm version before attempting an upgrade to this chart version.

Alongside the toolchain update, the default Airflow image is now set to 3.2.2. This ensures that new installations of the chart automatically benefit from the latest security patches and performance improvements found in the core Airflow engine. For teams managing their own internal mirrors, this change requires a fresh sync of the 3.2.2 images to their private registries.

A significant architectural hint appears in the new support for configuring enableServiceLinks. In Kubernetes, this setting defaults to true, causing the kubelet to inject environment variables for every active service in a namespace into every pod. In large namespaces with many services, this leads to significant environment variable bloat and can even cause issues with process startup if the environment size exceeds kernel limits.

The Airflow Helm Chart 1.22.0 allows users to explicitly set this to false. The project has announced that the default will flip to false in the upcoming Chart 2.0 release. Platform engineers should take this opportunity to audit their DAG code and custom plugins. If your tasks rely on service environment variables like MY_DATABASE_SERVICE_HOST, you should migrate to DNS based lookups immediately or explicitly set enableServiceLinks to true in your values.yaml file to avoid breakage during the next major version bump.

This release adds an optional OpenTelemetry (OTel) service to the chart. This addition is a major step forward for teams pursuing vendor neutral observability strategies. By including OTel support directly in the chart, operators can more easily export traces and metrics to collectors like Jaeger or Prometheus without maintaining complex sidecar configurations or custom entrypoint scripts. This integration simplifies the path to achieving deep visibility into task execution and scheduler performance across distributed Kubernetes clusters.

Several fixes in this release target edge cases in complex Kubernetes environments. A fix for the Celery worker liveness probe addresses a hostname lookup failure that could lead to unnecessary pod restarts in certain network configurations. For users leveraging Airflow 3 features, a fix for NetworkPolicies ensures that task log access remains functional when strict egress and ingress rules are applied.

The chart now also correctly supports executor aliases in the executor label, providing more flexibility for teams using custom or third party executors. Other notable fixes include improvements to the triggerer KEDA database connection rendering and a resolution for a Go template error when comparing slices to nil. These changes collectively increase the stability of the deployment on diverse Kubernetes distributions.

Before upgrading to version 1.22.0, verify that your Helm client is at version 3.19.0 or higher. You should also check your current usage of service discovery environment variables. If you are not using DNS for service discovery within your Airflow pods, plan for the eventual removal of service links in the 2.0 chart release.

The update to Airflow 3.2.2 is generally a drop in replacement from 3.2.1, but you should review the core Airflow release notes for any changes to specific provider packages or configuration defaults that might affect your workloads.

The Apache Airflow Helm Chart 1.22.0 is available through the standard distribution channels: