Extend functionality on BitmapBuilder and use in Growables (#20754)
Specialize first/last agg for simple types in new-streaming engine (#20728)
Use PyO3 to convert between Python and Rust datetimes (#20660)
Improve state caching and parallelism of window functions (#20689)
Broadcast without materialization in concat_arr (#20681)
Cache rolling groups (#20675)
Use downcast_ref instead of dtype equality in <dyn SeriesTrait as AsRef<ChunkedArray<T>> (#20664)
Fix performance regression for DataFrame serialization/pickling (#20641)
Make Parquet verify_dict_indices SIMD (#20623)
Move to zlib-rs by default and use zstd::with_buffer (#20614)
Skip filter expansion in eager (#20586)
Improve unique pred-pd (#20569)

✨ Enhancements

Allow different python versions for pickle (#20740)
Add SQL support for the NORMALIZE string function (#20705)
Add 'allow_exact_matches' join_asof' (#20723)
Add new-streaming first/last aggregations (#20716)
Add Parquet Sink to new streaming engine (#20690)
Make automatic use of Azure storage account keys opt-in (#20652)
Reduce scan_csv() (and friends') memory usage when using BytesIO (#20649)
Improve GroupsProxy/GroupsPosition to be sliceable and cheaply cloneable (#20673)
Add str.normalize() (#20483)
Allow more group_by agg expressions in the new streaming engine (#20663)
Support loading Excel Table objects by name (#20654)
Support writing to file objects from write_excel (#20638)
Raise DuplicateError if given a pyarrow Table object with duplicate column names (#20624)
Support writing partitioned parquet to cloud (#20590)
Add hint to error message for extra struct field in JSON (#20612)
Add index_of() function to Series and Expr (#19894)
Update sqlparser-rs, enabling "LEFT" keyword to be optional for anti/semi joins in SQL queries (#20576)
Add cat.starts_with/cat.ends_with (#20257)

🐞 Bug fixes

Avoid blocking on async runtime when resolving cloud scans (#20750)
Fix allow_invalid_certificates being ignored in storage_options (#20744)
Incorrect output type for map_groups returning all-NULL column (#20743)
Fix unique(maintain_order=True) raising InvalidOperationError for null array (#20737)
Don't collapse into a Nested Loop Join if the cross join maintains order (#20729)
Don't serialize credentials provider (#20741)
Fix Series.n_unique raising for list of struct (#20724)
Fix incorrect top-k by sorted column, fix head() returning extra rows (#20722)
Add outer validity to AnyValueBufferTrusted for structs (#20713)
Don't partition group-by with non-scalar literals in agg (#20704)
Fix xor operation of selector with Expr (#20702)
Incorrect view buffer dedup (#20691)
Only verify Parquet ConvertedType if no LogicalType is given (#20682)
Validate length of schema_overrides in read_csv (#20672)
Fix map_elements ignoring skip_nulls=True for struct dtype (#20668)
Check for MAP-GROUPS in cloud-eligible (#20662)
Fix empty output of to_arrow() on filtered unit height DataFrame (#20656)
Add .default to azure credential provider scope URL (#20651)
Fix join_asof panicking for invalid tolerance input (#20643)
Incorrect flag check on is_elementwise (#20646)
Don't panic but set null type if type is unknown (#20647)
Fix performance regression for DataFrame serialization/pickling (#20641)
Fix Int128 dtype serialization (#20629)
Ensure read_excel and read_ods support reading from raw bytes for all engines (#20636)
Ensure that SQL LIKE and ILIKE operators support multi-line matches (#20613)
Properly broadcast in sort_by (#20434)
Properly load nested Parquet Statistics (#20610)
AWS environment config was not loaded when credential provider was used (#20611)
Fix order observability of group-by-dyn (#20615)
Soundness when loading Parquet string statistics (#20585)
Fix error filtering after with_columns() on unit height LazyFrame (#20584)
Propagate tenant_id to CredentialProviderAzure if given (#20583)
Restore symbols on Apple by bumping nightly version (#20563)
Fix type annotation of str.strip_chars_* methods (#20565)
Fix variable name in error message for "unsupported data type" in rolling and upsampling operations (#20553)

📖 Documentation

Add more information for cross joins (#20753)
Fix typo in sql functions (cosinus -> cosine) (#20676)
Add links to read_excel "engine_options" and "read_options" docstring (#20661)
Fix small typo in plugins (polars-dt -> polars-st) (#20657)
Add polars-h3 and polars-st to plugin list (#20653)
Add docs reference for Field (#20625)
Update DataFrame join examples (#20587)
Miscellaneous minor updates/fixes (#20573)
Update "group_by_rolling" (deprecated) to "rolling" in user guide (#20548)

📦 Build system

Update to official release of PyO3 0.23.4 (#20683)
Officially support Python 3.13 (#20549)

🛠️ Other improvements

Fix remote benchmark script (#20755)
Fix tests (#20745)
Simplify hive predicate handling in NEW_MULTIFILE (#20730)
Add tests for various open issues (#20720)
Fixes an Excel test following new fastexcel release (#20703)
Add tests for various open issues that have been fixed (#20680)
Don't include debug symbols in benchmark run (#20571)
Implement CSV, IPC and NDJson in the MultiScanExec node (#20648)
Don't rely on argument order of optimization_toggle (#20622)
Fix Python deps installation in remote-benchmark workflow (#20619)
Fix flaky categorical test (#20591)
Bump multiversion from 0.7 to 0.8 (#20543)
Remove unused nested function in LazyFrame.fill_null (#20558)
Improve bin size info (#20551)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible! @Jesse-Bakker, @MarcoGorelli, @MoizesCBF, @SamuelAllain, @alexander-beedie, @bschoenmaeckers, @coastalwhite, @eitsupi, @etiennebacher, @itamarst, @jqnatividad, @lukemanley, @mcrumiller, @nameexhaustion, @orlp, @ritchie46 and @stinodego