Standardize error message format (#11598)
allow coalesce in streaming (#11633)
Implement schema, schema_override for pl.read_json with array-like input (#11492)
add SQL support for UNION [ALL] BY NAME, add "diagonal_relaxed" strategy for pl.concat (#11597)
improve performance and fix panic in async parquet reader (#11607)
add time_unit argument to duration, default to "us" (#11586)
support read_database options passthrough to the underlying connection's execute method (enables parameterised SQL queries, etc) (#11562)
elide overflow checks on i64 (#11563)
add INITCAP string function for SQL (#9884)

🐞 Bug fixes

Fix input replacement logic for slice (#11631)
slice expr can be taken in cse (#11628)
ensure nested logical types are converted to physical (#11621)
correctly convert nullability of nested parquet fields to arrow (#11619)
improve performance and fix panic in async parquet reader (#11607)
normalize filepath in sink_parquet (#11605)
parse time unit properly in pl.lit (#11573)
expand all literals before group_by (#11590)
fix as_dict with include_key=False for partition_by (#9865)
mark take_group_last function as unsafe (#11587)
handle unary operators applied to numbers used in SQL IN clauses (#11574)
Align new_columns argument for scan_csv and read_csv (#11575)
Add initialization support for python Timedeltas (#11566)
incomplete reading of list types from parquet (#11578)
respect identity in horizontal sum (#11559)
bug in BitMask::get_u32 (#11560)
take slice into account in parallel unions (#11558)
correct schema empty df in hive partitioning read (#11557)
ensure ListChunked::full_null uses physical types (#11554)
respect 'hive_partitioning' argument in parquet (#11551)
fix parquet deserialization Overflow error by using i64 offset types when promoting Arrow Lists to LargeLists (#11549)
streamline is_in handling of mismatched dtypes and fix a minor regression (#11533)
fix comparing tz-aware series with stdlib datetime (#11480)
catch use of non equi-joins in SQL interface and raise appropriate error (#11526)
rework SQL join constraint processing to properly account for all USING columns (#11518)

🛠️ Other improvements

Improved user guide for cloud functionality (#11646)
Improve some docstrings (#11644)
Disable clippy lint "too many arguments" for py-polars (#11616)
Make backwardfill and forwardfill function expr non-anonymous (#11630)
Make all expr in dt namespace non-anonymous (#11627)
Fix changelog for language-specific breaking changes (#11617)
Make value_counts and unique_counts function expr non-anonymous (#11601)
Make arg_min(max), diff in list namespace non-anonymous (#11602)
Rename write_csv parameter quote to quote_char (#11583)
improve struct documentation (#11585)
Remove **kwargs from LazyFrame.collect() (#11567)
use a generic consistent total ordering, also for floats (#11468)
fix lints (#11555)
Remove toolchain specification workaround (#11552)
Trigger Python release from Actions workflow dispatch (#11538)
Enable additional flags for x86-64 wheels (#11487)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible! @ByteNybbler, @MarcoGorelli, @TheDataScientistNL, @alexander-beedie, @andysham, @c-peters, @jhorstmann, @mcrumiller, @nameexhaustion, @orlp, @reswqa, @ritchie46, @romanovacca, @stinodego and @svaningelgem