Install kyverno with Homebrew, Nix, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• kyverno

Project history

Nirmata introduced Kyverno in 2019 as an open source Kubernetes-native policy-management project. The project was built for Kubernetes governance and security use cases such as validating resources, mutating defaults, generating supporting resources, and reporting violations.

Kyverno entered CNCF as a sandbox project on November 10, 2020, moved to incubation on July 13, 2022, and graduated on March 16, 2026. CNCF project data lists February 4, 2019 as the first commit, matching the project's 2019 origin story.

Adoption history

Kyverno adoption grew with Kubernetes platform engineering and DevSecOps practices. Its policy library, Helm charts, CLI, reports, and admission-controller model made it usable both in clusters and in pre-admission workflows such as CI checks.

CNCF project data in 2026 showed thousands of contributors and over a thousand contributing organizations, along with public case studies. That governance path and visible contributor base made Kyverno a mainstream cloud-native policy project rather than a vendor-only utility.

How it is used

Operators install Kyverno into Kubernetes clusters to validate, mutate, generate, or clean up resources through admission controls and background scans. Policies are stored as Kubernetes custom resources and can be managed with kubectl, kustomize, Helm, and Git workflows.

The `kyverno` CLI is used for testing and applying policies outside the cluster, which made the Homebrew package useful to developers building policy libraries or checking manifests before deployment.

Why package nerds care

Kyverno is significant to package and CLI catalogues because it bridges a cluster controller and a local developer tool. Installing the CLI gives package-manager users access to the same policy language that governs production clusters.

Its companion projects broadened the package surface around the core engine, including Chainsaw for end-to-end tests, Kyverno JSON for non-Kubernetes JSON payloads, Policy Reporter, and the Kyverno Envoy plugin.

Timeline

• 2019: Nirmata introduced Kyverno as Kubernetes-native policy management.
• 2020: CNCF accepted Kyverno as a sandbox project on November 10.
• 2022: Kyverno moved to CNCF incubation on July 13.
• 2023: Kyverno published third-party security audit work as part of project hardening.
• 2026: Kyverno graduated in CNCF on March 16.
• 2026: Kyverno 1.18 was announced on April 24 as the first release after CNCF graduation.

Related projects

• OPA Gatekeeper is the most common comparison point for Kubernetes admission policy, with a different policy-language and ecosystem model.
• Chainsaw, Kyverno JSON, Policy Reporter, and the Kyverno Envoy plugin are companion projects named by the Kyverno project as separate tools around the core engine.
• Sigstore, Cosign, Helm, Kustomize, and Kubernetes ValidatingAdmissionPolicy features are adjacent technologies in Kyverno's supply-chain and policy workflows.

Sources

• https://github.com/kyverno/kyverno
• https://kyverno.io/blog/2026/04/24/announcing-kyverno-release-1.18/
• https://kyverno.io/docs
• https://nirmata.com/2019/06/03/introducing-kyverno-kubernetes-native-policy-management/
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kyverno/kyverno/main/README.md
• https://www.cncf.io/projects/kyverno/