Kong Gateway (OSS) 2.5 introduces a new Performance Testing Framework to enhance the performance benchmark capabilities of the gateway, allowing users to assess and debug performance bottlenecks efficiently, which is crucial for maintaining robust production systems. This update also strengthens the Hybrid Mode foundation, adding features like upstream health check endpoints on the Data Plane and improved compatibility checks for Control and Data Planes, aiming to enhance observability and resiliency. The release includes significant plugin updates, such as improvements to the HMAC Authentication plugin to support the @request-target field, facility configuration options in the Syslog plugin, and new metrics for the Prometheus plugin to assist in troubleshooting. Additionally, support for new tags in the Zipkin plugin facilitates better tracing of API requests. The update acknowledges the contributions of several community members who played a vital role in this release.