The Apache Flink community has released version 1.20, focusing on usability enhancements for developers and operators, ahead of the anticipated Flink 2.0. The update features notable improvements in Flink SQL, including a new bucketing strategy (FLIP-376) and the ability to specify data freshness requirements (FLIP-435) through materialized tables. Additionally, FLIP-380 enables parallel computation of aggregations on non-keyed streams in batch mode, addressing the deprecation of the DataSet API. Other significant changes include configurations to manage state file uploads for checkpoints (FLIP-306) to reduce load on storage systems, and enhancements in recovery processes from JobMaster failures (FLIP-383). The update concludes the community's efforts to deprecate outdated APIs and refine configurations, as preparations for Flink 2.0 continue. The release is supported by contributions from numerous developers and further integrates with Confluent Cloud for AI model inference in Flink SQL.