Release date: October 15, 2025

## Windows support

There's a known issue affecting this release on Windows nodes.
Don't install this version on Windows.

Contact your support team if you have any questions.

## Improvements

- Chef Infra Client has improved performance when building large arrays of cookbooks. Thanks [@dafyddcrosby](https://github.com/dafyddcrosby)! [#15274](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15274)
- We updated knife-ec-backup to include cookbooks with a frozen status. Before, this led to Chef Infra Server upgrades that didn't include frozen cookbooks. [#15217](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15217)

## Resource updates

- We fixed the ohai resource where a nil value could be assigned to the plug-in path in the reload action. [#15229](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15229)
- We fixed a bug in the chocolatey_installer resource that always downloaded the installer from Choco and ignored the custom URL option. [#15306](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15306)
- We updated the apt_repository resource with the following changes:

  - apt_repository now correctly handles an array of key URLs in the `key` property when `signed_by` is true (the default).
  - If you invoke apt_repository more than once with the same key URL, later instances of apt_repository now correctly import their keys.
    Before, only the first instance would have its key imported.
  - apt_repository can now handle GPG key imports on Debian version 13/Trixie.

  [#15235](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15235)

## Packaging

- We aren't releasing an AIX package for this release.
- We added a software bill of materials (SBOM) to all builds. [#15317](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15317) [#15319](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15319)
- We removed old .NET version 5 DLL files from the build. We now use .NET 8 and these files now come directly from the chef-powershell gem. [#15190](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15190)
- We added Black Duck workflows to scan for security vulnerabilities. [#15093](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15093)

## Security

- We updated the activesupport gem to address CVE-2023-22796. [#15298](https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/15298)