The process around the creation of the Release Notes in Kubernetes falls into the responsibility of SIG Release. Multiple teams are involved in the process as well as different publishing targets (or consumers). The current state of the involved participants and tooling looks like this:
During the release cycle, the Release Notes sub-team of the Release Team continuously creates drafted Markdown and JSON versions of the ongoing release. The Release Notes Website as well as this repository are updated throughout the cycle.
The Branch Managers (part of the Release Managers group) update
kubernetes/kubernetes throughout the release cycle.
This happens as part of the release cuts in an
automated fashion.
The Documentation sub-team of the Release Team ensures that the official kubernetes.io website gets updated after the final release version has been cut.
Patch releases happen on their own cadence, separate from the active release schedule. The Patch Release Team (part of the Release Managers group) takes care of updating the relevant repositories during a patch release.