Rancher 2.9.0 is targeted to support K8s versions range 1.27 - 1.30. This means that 1.25 and 1.26 will no longer be officially supported and we want to remove the ability to provision new k8s 1.25-1.26 clusters.

• RKE1 provisioned AND standalone - changes in KDM, to be handled as part of this issue - @mitulshah-suse
• RKE2/k3s provisioned - changes in KDM, to be handled as part of this issue - @mitulshah-suse
• Hosted providers - EKS, AKS, GKE
  • @kkaempf @mbologna , could you please create issues for EKS/AKS/GKE and get them into v2.9.0-targeting operators?
  • I believe we will need UI changes similar to Remove K8s v1.23 and v1.24 from EKS hardcoded list ui#5071 and Remove support for K8s v1.23-v1.24 AKS/GKE for Rancher v2.8 ui#5072 but it looks like Highlander team handles them and not UI team (FYI @gaktive / @nwmac)
• Imported clusters - k3s/RKE2 (covered by "RKE2/k3s provisioned")

Note: See #42828 for a similar change done for Rancher 2.8.0 for reference.