We are beyond thrilled to announce a major milestone in our journey: Microcks has officially been accepted as an Incubating project by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)!

Moving from the Sandbox to the Incubating stage is a massive achievement. For the Microcks community, this isn’t just a new label; it is a formal validation of our project’s maturity. Reaching this level means the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) has thoroughly reviewed and confirmed our real-world adoption, solid governance models, and rigorous security posture.

For platform teams and enterprises evaluating tools for production-grade API mocking and testing, Incubating status represents the credibility threshold required to rely on a tool at scale.

A Year of Explosive Growth

Our momentum leading up to this announcement has been record-breaking. In the latest CNCF Projects Velocity report (1/1/2025 - 1/1/2026), Microcks ranked within the top 65 of over 236 projects, a testament to the sheer energy of our ecosystem.

This velocity is reflected in our 2025 metrics:

• Global Adoption: We saw a massive surge in usage, with annual container image downloads jumping from 850k in 2024 to 2.5+ million in 2025: more than 3x growth year-over-year.
• 2026 Headstart: The momentum isn’t slowing down; we have already reached over 1.3 million downloads since January 2026 alone.
• Community Depth: Our contributor base grew to 167 active individuals representing 35 different organizations, ensuring diverse perspectives drive our roadmap.
• Trusted by Industry: We now have 34 public adopters, with 13 new organizations joining the list in 2025 to help demonstrate Microcks’ sustainability in real-world business contexts.

A Heartfelt Thank You to Our Community

This milestone belongs to all of you. We are extremely proud and happy about this move, which is the direct result of years of community effort.

• Our Contributors: Your energy, code, and documentation are the heartbeat of this project.
• Our Adopters: A special thank you to our public adopters who rely on Microcks in real-world, business-critical contexts.
• Our Sponsor: We owe a debt of gratitude to Postman, our sponsor for the past three years. Their graceful support and belief in open source collaboration have been instrumental in our growth.

Gratitude to the CNCF

We want to thank the CNCF TOC, TAG App Delivery, and the broader CNCF team for their invaluable support and guidance throughout this process. We are staunch promoters of the “Better Together” approach, and this collaboration reinforces how complementary cloud native projects can deliver greater value to end users.

A special kudos to Katie Gamanji, who served as the Microcks sponsor over the past several months. We deeply appreciated her feedback and help in refining key aspects of our incubating application; her collaboration was essential to making this happen.

Understanding the Journey

For those interested in the rigorous process and “due diligence” behind this promotion, we invite you to explore the full details here:

• Microcks Incubation Application: GitHub Issue #1552
• Microcks Due Diligence: GitHub Pull Request #2038

Looking Ahead: The Future of API Mocking

As we enter this new chapter in 2026, our mission remains unchanged, but our resolve is stronger. We are ready to keep growing and become the de facto standard for open source API mocking and testing.

We empower cloud native developers to level up their API execution. By leveraging our mocking and sandboxing capabilities, organizations can accelerate the adoption of microservices while ensuring conformance testing never bottlenecks innovation.

Let’s keep building the future of API testing together !