Helm

Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes and a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, maintained by a community of over 400 contributors from organizations including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, Bitnami, SUSE, Samsung SDS, and Ticketmaster. Helm Charts provide a structured way to define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes applications, eliminating copy-and-paste deployment patterns and enabling reproducible infrastructure as code. A Chart is a collection of files that describe a related set of Kubernetes resources, including templated manifests, default configuration values, metadata, and optional subchart dependencies for composing multi-service stacks. The latest major release, Helm 4, introduced significant architecture improvements. Key features include manage complexity through templated manifests that serve as a single point of authority for application definitions, easy updates with in-place upgrades and lifecycle hooks for pre-install, post-install, pre-upgrade, and post-delete automation, simple versioning and sharing through OCI registry support and traditional chart repositories, and automated rollbacks via helm rollback to restore previous known-good states. The Artifact Hub hosts over 800 community-maintained charts covering databases, message queues, monitoring stacks, CI runners, and application frameworks. Helm integrates with Kubernetes RBAC, namespace isolation, and custom resource definitions. Installable via Homebrew, Chocolatey, Scoop, and Snap across macOS, Windows, and Linux. The project holds weekly SIG Apps meetings and developer standups. Copyright 2026 The Helm Authors, The Linux Foundation.