A survey of the Apache Iceberg market in July 2026: the state of the specification, platform support, the acquisition wave, the catalog contest, and how.
Consumer hardware, columnar formats, single-node engines, and the Iceberg REST catalog crossed a threshold: a large share of cluster work now runs locally.
The Iceberg and Parquet specifications are co-evolving. Several of the most consequential Iceberg v4 proposals are waiting on Parquet work.
Residency is a storage location. Sovereignty is who can compel access, who operates the systems, and whether you can leave.
