Release note arrow go 18.6.0

_posts/2026-04-28-arrow-go-18.6.0.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Apache Arrow Go 18.6.0 Release"
+date: "2026-04-28 00:00:00"
+author: pmc
+categories: [release]
+---
+<!--
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+
+The Apache Arrow team is pleased to announce the v18.6.0 release of Apache Arrow Go. 
+This minor release covers 46 commits from 16 distinct contributors.
+
+## Contributors
+```console
+$ git shortlog -sn v18.5.2..v18.6.0
+    25	Matt Topol
+     6	Sebastiaan van Stijn
+     2	Dima Kuznetsov
+     2	Willem Jan
+     1	Alex
+     1	Alex Normand
+     1	Andrei Tserakhau
+     1	Ben Bellick
+     1	David Li
+     1	Harrison Crosse
+     1	Karen Li
+     1	Lucas Valente
+     1	junyan-ling
+     1	starpact
+     1	wjywbs
+     1	wwarner-inf
+```
+
+## Highlights
+
+### Arrow
+
+#### Features
+
+* compute package now has Sorting functions [#749](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/749)
+* Brand new `array/arreflect` package for round-trip reflection between Arrow and Go types/structs [#771](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/771)
+
+#### Bug Fixes
+
+* Route QueryContext for flightsql through active transactions [#692](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/692)
+* Correctly set nullbility for Avro list type [#709](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/709)
+* Fix data race and memory leak in is_in kernel [#712](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/712)
+* Fix cdata handling colons in values [#761](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/761)
+
+#### Performance Improvements
+
+* Improved take kernel performance (20-30% gains for 99% of cases) [#702](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/702)
+* Optimize the ARM64 NEON min/max assembly [#748](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/748)
+
+### Parquet
+
+#### Bug Fixes
+
+* Fixed Decimal256 sign extension [#711](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/711)
+* Strip the repetition_type from the root SchemaElement during serialization [#723](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/723)
+* Normalized the element name in stored ARROW:schema [#746](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/746)
+
+#### Performance Improvements
+
+* Avoid double bool bitmap conversion [#707](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/707)
+* Improve zstd pool memory usage (14x less memory!) [#717](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/717)
+* Optimized stats and bloom filters for boolean columns (76% less memory, more than twice as fast) [#715](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/715)
+* Vectorized bool unpack (~4x throughput) [#735](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/735), [#731](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/731)
+* Eliminated per-value allocation in delta bit-pack decoder (>4x faster decoding) [#730](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/730)
+
+
+### New Contributors
+* @junyan-ling made their first contribution in [#689](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/689)
+* @wjywbs made their first contribution in [#692](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/692)
+* @dimakuz made their first contribution in [#711](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/711)
+* @starpact made their first contribution in [#708](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/708)
+* @laskoviymishka made their first contribution in [#712](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/712)
+* @hcrosse made their first contribution in [#723](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/723)
+* @wwarner-inf made their first contribution in [#726](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/726)
+* @alexandre-normand made their first contribution in [#728](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/728)
+* @benbellick made their first contribution in [#754](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/754)
+* @thaJeztah made their first contribution in [#762](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/762)
+* @kli19 made their first contribution in [#757](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/757)
+* @serramatutu made their first contribution in [#758](https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/pull/758)
+
+**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/apache/arrow-go/compare/v18.5.2...v18.6.0