DuckDB 1.5 brings major performance improvements and new features. The new VARIANT type enables automatic JSON shredding for 10-100x faster semi-structured data queries. Min/max queries are 6-18x faster via statistics-based optimization, complex joins now leverage hash joins more broadly, and Top-N-by-group queries can be up to 70x faster. Common Subplan Elimination speeds up complex CTEs. New capabilities include reading entire folders of DuckDB files, writing to Azure Blob and ADLSv2 storage, non-blocking checkpointing with parallel WAL files (17% TPC-H throughput boost), and DuckLake 0.4 with macros and sorted tables.