Crossplane 2.0 takes open source orchestration beyond infrastructure, uniting applications and infrastructure in one Kubernetes-native model for platform teams.
The Crossplane open source project has released version 2.0, marking a pivotal expansion from managing only cloud infrastructure to orchestrating both applications and infrastructure. With this upgrade, platform teams can now deploy an application and all of its required infrastructure through a single YAML manifest, blurring the lines between deployment and provisioning.
Key architectural enhancements define this release. Compositions can now include any Kubernetes resource, enabling unified abstractions that cover databases, networking, applications, and monitoring. A new namespace-first approach aligns with Kubernetes conventions, improving multi-tenancy, reducing duplication, and enhancing access control. AWS is fully supported at launch, with Azure, GCP, and Terraform updates in progress. Crossplane 2.0 also introduces declarative “Operations” for one-off tasks, upgrades, and event-driven processes, alongside selective managed resource installation to prevent CRD overload.
Backward compatibility has been preserved. Legacy v1-style resources will continue to work, though cluster-scoped resources are now deprecated. Teams are encouraged to migrate incrementally to the new v2 patterns without operational pressure.
Crossplane maintainers Nic Cope and Jared Watts noted: “The problem was that Crossplane v1’s architecture, while powerful, had become overly opinionated. […] We realized we needed to step back and ask: what would Crossplane look like if we designed it today, with everything we’ve learned?”
Community response reflects both past challenges and optimism. Some users cited over-complexity as a drawback, while others welcomed the improvements. User AnomalousVibe shared: “This new release will be fantastic for developer experience; personally for us, it means we can start pruning a lot of our custom code, and we’re especially excited to start using the new operation functions.”
The roadmap highlights plans for better observability, advanced debugging tools, tighter cloud-native integration, and composition testing frameworks—positioning Crossplane 2.0 as a comprehensive, open source orchestration platform for applications and infrastructure alike.
