Pydantic v2.11 introduces significant performance improvements and new features, with contributions from over 50 developers. It offers faster schema build times and reduced memory usage, particularly benefiting projects with numerous or nested models. This version drops support for Python 3.8 and officially supports PEP 695 and 696, enhancing generic class and type alias functionalities. New APIs simplify field definitions and alias configurations, while experimental support for free-threaded builds is introduced for CPython 3.13. The release also includes changes to JSON schema generation, deprecation warnings for certain field annotations, and a third-party test suite to ensure compatibility with popular libraries.