On October 7, 2026, HashiCorp published Terraform 1.17.0-rc1 with a -minimal-refresh planning option that only refreshes resources with proposed changes, support for variables in provider requirements, and the general availability of Terraform Policy. A release candidate to test on large estates, not yet to roll out everywhere.
On August 12, 2026 HashiCorp shipped Terraform 1.16 in release candidate, with two major changes: import blocks now work inside modules, and the new store block on terraform_data keeps ephemeral and sensitive values across plan and apply. Teams adopting Terraform over existing infrastructure gain the lever they were missing.
OpenTofu v1.12 shipped in May 2026 with native state encryption, provider for_each, and early variable evaluation — features Terraform’s open-source CLI still lacks. Three years after the fork, the question is no longer why you should leave Terraform, but why you would stay.
HashiCorp announces Vault Enterprise 2.0 with Workload Identity Federation, automated Linux credential rotation, and high-performance envelope encryption. The question shifts from ’who knows the password’ to ’who can prove their identity’ — and that changes everything about how we secure infrastructure.
