support negative indices in gather in group_by context (#13373)
validate Enum categories (#13356)
improve Series/DataFrame init from existing Series/DataFrame objects (#13344)
support negative indexing in gather (select context) (#13343)
support min_periods for temporal rolling aggregations (#13342)
support REGEXP and RLIKE pattern matching in SQL engine (#13359)
emit suggestion for how to replace map_elements sigmoid function with expressions (#13347)
Support Enum types in interchange protocol (#13368)
add plot namespace (which defers to hvplot) (#13238)
gracefully handle panics in plugins (#13329)
rework pl.exclude as a pure selector, allowing other selectors as input (#13301)
Implement unique/n_unique/unique_counts/is_unique/is_duplicated for Null series (#13307)
support common variant spelling STDEV in the SQL engine (in addition to STDDEV) (#13303)
enhance expression-level filter syntax with support for multiple predicates and kwargs (#12689)
change doc links to new url docs.pola.rs (#13290)
support horizontal concatenation of LazyFrames (#13139)
Rename Utf8 data type to String, keep Utf8 as alias (#13257)
dispatch strict_cast via cast (#13255)
Impl any/all for array type (#13250)
add cancellable queries (#13178)
add offset parameter to gather_every (#13156)
Support Array dtype AnyValue Series construction (#12817)
Allow step parameter in int_ranges to take an expression (#13148)
make python map_batches safer (#13181)
Implement count for DataFrame/LazyFrame (#13153)

🐞 Bug fixes

don't lose track of ones and zeros dtype, improve use with Array, raise error if dtype invalid (#13326)
updated Display trait for enum categoricals (#13331)
nested dtypes: export logical type in plugins (#13325)
fix invalid dtype setting in array (#13327)
fix csv parser error when commented-out rows precede the header row (#13318)
invalid schema outer join after projection pd (#13315)
invalid predicate optimization (#13313)
Account for null values in categorical unique/n_unique (#13308)
fix schema when subtracting (#13309)
broadcasting of unit LHS in string operations (#12737)
sorting categorical lexically bugs on null values (#13271)
improve replace on categoricals (#13223)
round trip to JSON and back should preserve Enum type (#13267)
fix return type hint of list series any/all (#13265)
sink_csv deadlock (#13239)
Correctly use read_parquet for all binary inputs (#13218)
is_in operator for categoricals (#13205)
Better handle mismatched dtypes in replace (#13213)
Fix replace fast path by casting old input to the right data type (#13176)
ndjson nested null schema inference (#13206)
don't cast to unknown dtypes (#13197)
maintain old join behavior in window expression (#13179)

🛠️ Other improvements

reverse condtion order in udfs _expr function (#13348)
Update release workflow for new upload/download artifact versions (#13355)
Allow construction of Series from memory buffers (#13323)
add 'pipe littering' to 'coming from pandas' section (#13335)
Refactor functionality related to Series buffers (#13291)
Restore light/darkmode switch in API reference (#13312)
Copy Makefile build commands to top level (#13293)
Fix release flags (#13298)
Re-enable consortium standard tests (#13296)
Update CODEOWNERS (#13292)
Add CPU compatibility check (#13134)
Change base url of docs/guide to docs.pola.rs (#13281)
Fix source link for dev docs (#13279)
fix return type hint of list series any/all (#13265)
Fix display of overloaded signatures (#13258)
clean up bytecode parsing a bit (#13221)
Add a couple of docstring examples to Series methods (#13244)
remove unnecessary arg unpacking (#13241)
update rustc (#13219)
fix horizontal concatenation documentation (#13141)
Replace blackdoc by ruff's new docstring formatter (#13182)
Update ruff & ruff settings (#13126)
Link to latest object_store docs in api doc (#13180)
Fix failing test (#13171)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible! @MarcoGorelli, @TNieuwdorp, @adamreeve, @alexander-beedie, @c-peters, @cjfuller, @dependabot, @dependabot[bot], @mcrumiller, @nameexhaustion, @orlp, @petrosbar, @r-brink, @reswqa, @ritchie46, @robvanmieghem and @stinodego