MLflow 1.26.1 is a patch release containing the following bug fixes:

• [Installation] Fix compatibility issue with protobuf >= 4.21.0 (#5945, @harupy)
• [Models] Fix get_model_dependencies behavior for models: URIs containing artifact paths (#5921, @harupy)
• [Models] Revert a problematic change to artifacts persistence in mlflow.pyfunc.log_model() that was introduced in MLflow 1.25.0 (#5891, @kyle-jarvis)
• [Models] Close associated image files when EvaluationArtifact outputs from mlflow.evaluate() are garbage collected (#5900, @WeichenXu123)

Small bug fixes and updates (#5874, #5942, #5941, #5940, #5938, @harupy; #5893, @PrajwalBorkar; #5909, @yashaswikakumanu; #5937, @BenWilson2)