August 18, 2026: Access externally managed Apache Iceberg™ tables through Snowflake Horizon Catalog (Preview)¶

You can now use the Horizon Iceberg REST Catalog (IRC) API to access externally managed Apache Iceberg™ tables in a catalog-linked database from external engines such as Apache Spark™, Trino, DuckDB, or PyIceberg. This extends existing Horizon IRC support for Snowflake-managed Iceberg tables so you can use a single catalog endpoint for both Snowflake-managed and externally managed tables, with Snowflake RBAC enforced consistently.

For more information, see Access externally managed Apache Iceberg™ tables in a catalog-linked database with an external engine through Snowflake Horizon Catalog.