[Feature Request]: Support Protobuf 7.x in Python SDK #40580

What would you like to happen?

Currently Apache Beam pins protobuf>=3.20.3,<7.0.0.dev0 in sdks/python/setup.py.

• Protobuf 7.34.0 was released on February 27, 2026: https://pypi.org/project/protobuf/7.34.0/ (latest is 7.36.2: https://pypi.org/project/protobuf/7.36.2/)
• https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/releases/tag/v34.0 is the corresponding release, and protoc >= 34.x (including Protobuf Edition 2024 codegen) emits Python gencode that requires protobuf >= 7.x at runtime.
• Downstream Google Cloud dependencies (google-api-core, proto-plus, grpcio-status, google-cloud-bigquery) already allow protobuf<8.0.0.

Can we update the upper bound to <8.0.0.dev0 and support Protobuf 7.x in the Python SDK (following #35432 / #35477)?

Issue Priority

Priority: 2 (default / most feature requests should be filed as P2)

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