Apache Kafka KIP-932 Share Groups: How the New Consumption Model Works

Apache Kafka's KIP-932 introduces Share Groups, a new message consumption model that allows multiple consumers to share the same topic partitions simultaneously, unlike traditional consumer groups where each partition is locked to a single consumer. The broker manages record delivery to any group member, maintains a per-record lock during processing, and automatically redelivers unacknowledged records. Consumers acknowledge records using ACCEPT, RELEASE, or REJECT states, enabling fine-grained per-record error handling. The feature reached early access in Kafka 4.0 (March 2025), preview in 4.1 (September 2025), and production-readiness in version 4.2 (February 2026), with Amazon MSK used as a managed-service reference. Adoption requires idempotent destinations, per-record error handling, updated autoscaling rules, and awareness of additional broker overhead.
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