What's next from Grafana Labs

Custom labels in Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring now attach directly to every check metric and log - not only the sm_check_info metric - and the label_ prefix is removed.

The dashboard-specific endpoints for starring and unstarring a dashboard are deprecated in favor of the generic Collections Stars API, which stars any kind of resource through one shared endpoint shape instead of a separate endpoint per resource kind.

The old endpoints still work, but are now marked deprecated:

• POST /api/user/stars/dashboard/uid/{dashboard_uid} (star a dashboard)
• DELETE /api/user/stars/dashboard/uid/{dashboard_uid} (unstar a dashboard)

The replacement is:

• PUT /apis/collections.grafana.app/v1alpha1/namespaces/{namespace}/stars/user-{your_user_uid}/update/dashboard.grafana.app/Dashboard/{dashboard_uid} (star)
• DELETE /apis/collections.grafana.app/v1alpha1/namespaces/{namespace}/stars/user-{user_uid}/update/dashboard.grafana.app/Dashboard/{dashboard_uid} (unstar)

No request body is needed; the star target is fully described by the URL path.

Grafana Loki deprecated several legacy multi-store backends in release 3.0 The following legacy storage backends have been removed in Loki 4.0:

• Apache Cassandra
• Amazon DynaomoDB
• BoltDB (for indexes)
• Google BigTable
• gRPC Store

Loki 4.0 will fail to start if a deprecated and removed storage backend is referenced in the schema or storage configuration.

The Loki release 3.4 introduce new object storage clients based on the Thanos Object Storage Client Go module. For several Loki releases this was opt-in and only took effect only when -use-thanos-objstore was set to true. In Loki 4.0 -use-thanos-objstore is set to `true` by default.

We deprecated mulit-storage backends in Loki 3.0 and they have been removed for Loki 4.0. Table manager is only needed if you are using a multi-store backend. Starting with Loki 4.0, the single store TSDB is the only supported Loki index. TSDB has been the recommended Loki index since Loki v2.8, and it does not need the table manager.

Simple Scalable Deployment mode is being deprecated and removed in Loki 4.0. The write, read, and backend targets, as well as the configuration option -legacy-read-mode will not be available any more and Loki will fail to start if used.
Users must migrate to monolithic mode, distributed mode, or the new HA Monolithic mode being introduced in Loki 4.0.

The CSV and JSON API data sources are deprecated. Both plugins move into a critical-security-updates-only phase: they keep receiving critical security fixes, but no new features or non-security bug fixes. Support for both data sources ends February 1, 2027.

The Parca data source is deprecated. The plugin moves into a critical-security-updates-only phase: it keeps receiving critical security fixes, but no new features or non-security bug fixes. Support ends January 2, 2027.

Kubernetes Monitoring will let you give an AI agent access to the queries behind its own pages, such as the ones that count Nodes, total the CPU used by a namespace, and calculate cost. A new AI agent access tab in the Configuration page will hold a prompt you copy into your agent’s configuration.

If you upgrade gcx from v0.4.x or earlier, there are breaking changes to be aware of:

1. Commands are renamed across many providers, with no aliases. Old spellings fail as unknown commands. Behaviour, flags, positional arguments, output schemas, and exit codes are unchanged, only the names moved. The aim is to make a more predictable and understandable command surface. Here are all the changes:

Grafana’s AI Observability (project name: Sigil) is being renamed to Grafana Agent Observability. As the product has grown to cover full agent lifecycles — from tool use to evaluations to guardrails — the name is catching up to what it already does.

The new Grafana Team API will return richer team context. When you query a team through the new API, the response will include the team’s members and its external group mappings as part of the Team resource itself, so a single call will give you a complete picture of the team.