The following is a rough estimate of the release timeline.
Kafka 0.9.0.0: (Nov. 2015)
- New consumer client for better performance, api, and portability.
- Other possible features
Candidate features for Kafka 0.10.0.0: (Q2. 2016)
Starting with planned release Kafka 0.10.1.0 the Apache Kafka community is moving to time-based release plan as described in the following Wiki page:
- Time Based Releases in Apache Kafka
The next release is planned for mid-October 2016, with feature-freeze (i.e branch cutting) planning for mid-September.