AWS CDK Community Update: Jan/Feb 2026!

What's New

Hello! So excited to get the regular blogpost updates on AWS CDK going for 2026! This update covers CDK updates from December 2025 through February 2026. The community delivered 150+ pull requests spanning EKS, Bedrock, ECS, and 15+ other AWS services. Whether you're new to CDK or a seasoned user, you'll find new capabilities that make infrastructure as code more powerful and easier to maintain.

Community at a Glance

• 150+ pull requests merged from external contributors
• 25+ first-time contributors joined the project
• 17 top contributors driving major features
• Active development across EKS, Bedrock, ECS, and 15+ other services

Upgrade Now

npm install -g aws-cdk@latest

TL;DR

Top features to try this week:
CDK Mixins (Preview): Add capabilities to constructs without rebuilding them link
Kiro Power for AWS IaC: AI-powered CDK and CloudFormation development assistance link
ECS Deployments: Built-in Linear/Canary strategies for safer rollouts link
CloudWatch Logs: Deletion protection prevents accidental data loss link
EKS Hybrid Nodes: Integrate on-premises infrastructure with EKS clusters link
Bedrock AgentCore: API Gateway integration and episodic memory for AI agents link
Also new: Glue typed partition projection, Synthetics Playwright 5.0, RDS enhanced metrics

Major Features

CDK Mixins (Preview) - Add Features to Any Construct

Mixins let you compose functionality onto existing constructs. Think of them as reusable "add-ons" that can be applied to any compatible construct. This means that you don't need to wait for a property to be supported in L2 constructs anymore. For example, using an unsupported AnalyticsConfigurationProperty on S3 L2 construct, becomes simple with the CfnBucketPropsMixin.

const l2bucket = new s3.Bucket(this, 'L2 Bucket')
      .with(new CfnBucketPropsMixin({
        analyticsConfigurations: [{
            id: 'my-analytics',
            storageClassAnalysis: {
                dataExport: {
                    destination: {....},
                }
            }
        }]
    }))

Try it: npm install @aws-cdk/mixins-preview - Read the docs
Note: Preview feature API may change. Currently TypeScript/JavaScript only.
Read blogpost about CDK Mixins

Amazon EKS Enhancements

The EKS module received significant love this quarter with multiple community-driven improvements:
EKS Hybrid Nodes Support You can now seamlessly integrate on-premises and edge infrastructure with your EKS clusters. This opens up hybrid cloud architectures with consistent Kubernetes management.
Native OIDC Provider We've introduced OidcProviderNative using L1 constructs, providing a more efficient alternative to the custom resource-based OpenIdConnectProvider. This improves deployment speed and reduces complexity.
New Access Entry Types Support for EC2, HYBRID_LINUX, and HYPERPOD_LINUX access entry types gives you more granular control over cluster access patterns.

declare const cluster: eks.Cluster;
declare const nodeRole: iam.Role;

// Grant access with EC2 type for Auto Mode node role
cluster.grantAccess('nodeAccess', nodeRole.roleArn, [
  eks.AccessPolicy.fromAccessPolicyName('AmazonEKSAutoNodePolicy', {
    accessScopeType: eks.AccessScopeType.CLUSTER,
  }),
], { accessEntryType: eks.AccessEntryType.EC2 });
});

Read more in the EKS module documentation

Bedrock AgentCore Expansion

Thanks to Dinesh Sajwan and Yuki Matsuda, Bedrock AgentCore received powerful new capabilities:
API Gateway Target Support Integrate your AgentCore gateways directly with API Gateway, enabling more flexible routing and integration patterns.
Gateway Interceptors Add custom logic to intercept and transform requests/responses flowing through your AgentCore gateways.
Episodic Memory Strategy Implement sophisticated memory patterns for your AI agents, allowing them to maintain context across interactions.
Read more in the Bedrock AgentCore module documentation

ECS Deployment Strategies

Yuki Matsuda contributed builtin support for Linear and Canary deployment strategies in ECS. These strategies reduce risk when rolling out changes by gradually shifting traffic to new versions.

declare const cluster: ecs.Cluster;
declare const taskDefinition: ecs.TaskDefinition;
declare const blueTargetGroup: elbv2.ApplicationTargetGroup;
declare const greenTargetGroup: elbv2.ApplicationTargetGroup;
declare const prodListenerRule: elbv2.ApplicationListenerRule;

const service = new ecs.FargateService(this, 'Service', {
  cluster,
  taskDefinition,
  deploymentStrategy: ecs.DeploymentStrategy.LINEAR,
  linearConfiguration: {
    stepPercent: 10.0,
    stepBakeTime: Duration.minutes(5),
  },
});

const target = service.loadBalancerTarget({
  containerName: 'web',
  containerPort: 80,
  alternateTarget: new ecs.AlternateTarget('AlternateTarget', {
    alternateTargetGroup: greenTargetGroup,
    productionListener: ecs.ListenerRuleConfiguration.applicationListenerRule(prodListenerRule),
  }),
});

target.attachToApplicationTargetGroup(blueTargetGroup);

Spot Instance Support David Glaser added capacityOptionType to ManagedInstancesCapacityProvider, enabling costeffective Spot instance usage for your ECS workloads.
Read more in the ECS module documentation

AWS Glue Typed Partition Projection

Kazuho CryerShinozuka introduced typed partition projection for Glue tables, bringing type safety to your data catalog definitions:

declare const myDatabase: glue.Database;
new glue.S3Table(this, 'MyTable', {
  database: myDatabase,
  columns: [{
    name: 'data',
    type: glue.Schema.STRING,
  }],
  partitionKeys: [{
    name: 'date',
    type: glue.Schema.STRING,
  }],
  dataFormat: glue.DataFormat.JSON,
  partitionProjection: {
    date: glue.PartitionProjectionConfiguration.date({
      min: '2020-01-01',
      max: '2023-12-31',
      format: 'yyyy-MM-dd',
      interval: 1,  // optional, defaults to 1
      intervalUnit: glue.DateIntervalUnit.DAYS,  // optional: YEARS, MONTHS, WEEKS, DAYS, HOURS, MINUTES, SECONDS
    }),
  },
});

Read more in the Glue module documentation

RDS Enhancements

Enhanced Metrics Jasdeep Singh Bhalla added Read/Write IOPS metrics to DatabaseInstance and Volume Read/Write IOPS metrics to DatabaseCluster, giving you better visibility into database performance.
RDS Proxy Auth Scheme Yuki Matsuda added support for default authentication schemes in RDS Proxy, simplifying proxy configuration.
Read more in the RDS module documentation

CloudWatch Logs Deletion Protection

Robert Hanuschke contributed deletion protection configuration for CloudWatch Log Groups. This prevents accidental data loss by blocking log group deletion until protection is explicitly disabled.

new logs.LogGroup(this, 'LogGroup', {
  deletionProtectionEnabled: true,
});

Read more in the CloudWatch Logs module documentation

EC2 VPC Flow Logs to Firehose

Tietew added support for using Firehose IDeliveryStreamRef as a flow log destination, enabling realtime log streaming and transformation.

API Gateway v2 EventBridge Integration

Jasdeep Singh Bhalla added PutEvents support for EventBridge integration in API Gateway v2, making eventdriven architectures even easier to build.

Kiro Power for AWS Infrastructure as Code

The challenge: CDK and CloudFormation development requires constantly referencing documentation, understanding best practices, validating templates, and troubleshooting deployments.

The solution: Kiro's AWS Infrastructure as Code Power provides AI-powered assistance for CDK and CloudFormation development. It dynamically loads specialized tools and context only when needed, avoiding MCP context overload.

What it does:

• Latest Documentation Access: Search CDK docs, API references, and CloudFormation specs
• Code Generation: Generate well-architected infrastructure following AWS best practices
• Template Validation: Check CloudFormation templates for errors and compliance issues
• Deployment Troubleshooting: Analyze CloudTrail logs and diagnose deployment failures
• Best Practices: Apply CDK-NAG rules and security configurations automatically

Try it: Install the power in Kiro and activate it when working on infrastructure code. The power uses the AWS IaC MCP Server under the hood, providing the same capabilities with better context management.

Learn more about Kiro Powers

More Features

Additional improvements this quarter:
Hotswap Support for Bedrock AgentCore
Kenta Goto added hotswap support for AWS::BedrockAgentCore::Runtime, enabling faster development iterations.
EC2 VPC Flow Logs to Firehose (Tietew) - Real-time log streaming and transformation
API Gateway v2 EventBridge Integration (Jasdeep Singh Bhalla) - PutEvents support for event-driven architectures
SageMaker Health Check Timeout (Сергей) - More control over endpoint health checks
IoT Actions HTTP Batching (Kazuho Cryer-Shinozuka) - Improved efficiency for high-volume IoT workloads
Step Functions JSONata Support (Y.Nakamura) - Dynamic control over parallel execution

Community Highlights

Top External Contributors

We want to give a special shoutout to our most active external contributors this quarter:
Yuki Matsuda (mazyu36) - ECS deployment strategies, RDS Proxy auth, Bedrock AgentCore improvements, and EventScheduler fixes
Jasdeep Singh Bhalla - RDS metrics, ECS log driver options, and API Gateway v2 EventBridge integration
Kazuho Cryer-Shinozuka - Glue typed partition projection, IoT Actions batching, and Redshift improvements
Kenta Goto (go-to-k) - Mixins preview improvements and documentation fixes, hotswap on AgentCore
Tietew - EC2 Flow Logs Firehose destination support
yatakemi - Synthetics Playwright runtimes

Get Involved

The AWS CDK is powered by the AWS developer community. Here's how to contribute:

1. Join cdk.dev on Slack and introduce yourself
2. Try the CDK Workshop Video Series or Hands-on session
3. Pick a good first issue - we'll help you through it

Ongoing

Answer questions: Help others on Stack Overflow
Share your work: Publish constructs to Construct Hub
Report bugs: Open an issue with reproduction steps
Stay updated: Star the aws-cdk repo for release notifications Join our quarterly community meetings (videos available here)

Community Showcase

The CDK community continues to build, share, and teach. Here's how developers are using CDK in production and contributing back:

Learning & Best Practices

Manage IAM Policies Manually - Kenta Goto: Prevent CDK from automatically updating IAM role policies when you need full control
AIPowered CDK Development with Kiro - Nao San: Generate CDK code with latest best practices using AI assistance
Build a Serverless Website from Scratch - Dixit Rathod: 4 part tutorial: S3 hosting, API Gateway, DynamoDB, full integration

Monitoring & Operations

One Alarm for Many Resources - Johannes Konings: Use CloudWatch Metrics Insights to monitor 100 resources with one alarm instead of 100
Tag Log Buckets for Security Scanners - Johannes Konings: Make cdknag work with third-party security tools through tagging
Faster AgentCore Deployments - Kenta Goto: Skip CloudFormation for faster AI agent development cycles

Infrastructure Patterns

CDK Terrain Announcement Open Constructs Foundation has announced a community-driven continuation of the Cloud Development Kit for Terraform (CDKTF), with the new name of CDK Terrain.
Workflow Automation on ECS - Vu Dao: Deploy N8N workflow platform with Fargate, RDS, and ElastiCache
A/B Testing at the Edge - Kihara Takuya: Switch between S3 origins using CloudFront Functions for experimentation
Remote Access with Client VPN - Andrew Dunn: Set up secure VPN access to private AWS resources
Deploy TanStack Start Serverless - Johannes Konings: Full-stack React framework on Lambda with API Gateway streaming
Customize CDK Bootstrap - Johannes Konings: Add encryption and access logging to CDK staging bucket

Developer Tools

Self-Hosted GitHub Actions Runners - Amir Szekely (CloudSnorkel): Ephemeral runners on EC2, Fargate, Lambda, CodeBuild, or ECS
Parallel Lambda Bundling Marko (ServerlessLife): Bundle all Lambda functions at once instead of sequentially
Cost Analysis in Pull Requests - towardsthecloud: See AWS cost impact before merging infrastructure changes
Clean Up CDK Assets - Kenta Goto: Remove unused assets and Docker images from cdk.out directory
Visualize CDK Applications - Analyze and understand CDK app structure

AI & Advanced Use Cases

Build AI Agents with AgentCore - Martin Mueller Local development to cloud deployment for Bedrock AI agents
Custom Cognito Email Flows - Lee Gilmore Customize authentication emails with Lambda triggers

Video Content

CDK Development Workflows Practical development techniques and patterns
Advanced CDK Patterns Deep dive into CDK architecture

Thank You!

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed this quarter. Whether you submitted code, reported bugs, answered questions, or shared your knowledge you're making infrastructure as code better for everyone.
Special recognition to our top external contributors who drove major features and fixes. Your work impacts thousands of CDK users worldwide.
We're excited to see what the community builds next. Happy coding!