Older versions of Kubuntu (and I mean really older versions with Plasma 4) had a notification that told you when a new release was available, this was an extremely useful option since you didn’t have to check for new releases manually and, if I’m not mistaken, you could click the upgrade button to do a release upgrade.
However, in newer versions of Kubuntu (Plasma 5) that feature disappeared silently and now you have to manually run the upgrade script from KRunner which is specially inconvenient for new users (and could give Kubuntu a bad image for being harder to use which it isn’t).
I’m not a programmer, that’s why I am posting this here since it is the only serious caveat I see in Kubuntu and after all the improvements Discover has seen and the notification system refactoring I think it is the perfect moment to reimplement that feature.
I’m fairly certain this is because the upgrade notifications haven’t been enabled yet. Usually, the release team waits 1-2 weeks after a release to enable the upgrade notifications just to make sure that the bugs for the upgrade route are ironed-out
Once the release team enables the upgrade notifications, then users get notified. Prior to that, users are welcome to upgrade to the new release manually, but like I said, the new release notification happens 1-2 weeks after the release, sometimes sooner.
So, basically, you just needed to be patient, but we appreciate you testing the upgrade route prior to the upgrade being made publicly available. 
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That explains why I needed to pass the “-d” flag to the release upgrader. I upgraded with no issue though which is great.
So, in theory, if I install Kubuntu 19.04 in a VM and wait for 1-2 weeks the notification should appear?. I think I will test that unless someone confirms the notification system for Kubuntu is not implemented
Yes, that is exactly correct. The notification system for Kubuntu has been implemented for many releases now. Perhaps you just haven’t been waiting until the release team (which is the main Ubuntu release team) enables it. As I said before, the upgrade notification isn’t usually enabled for 1-2 weeks after the new release.
There have been more reports of the notification appearing in past releases from Kubuntu than your one report, so perhaps you just haven’t been waiting long enough and have assumed that it’s enabled on release day, which is not the case.
Additionally, per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UpdateNotifier, the update notifier (granted, the Kubuntu version is different but it uses the same underlying code) checks for new releases only once every two weeks.
I’m glad your upgrade went smoothly, which is definitely feedback the release team needs before the officially enable the upgrade flag. Bear in mind, as stated in my previous paragraph, you might be waiting 1-2 weeks since it only checks that often. As I understand it, this is intentional as it enables a slower rollout as to not overload the servers and allows archive mirrors to populate properly.
IF, however, you DO find a bug, this would not be the place to file a bug. You’d want to open Konsole and type
ubuntu-bug update-notifier
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Thanks for giving more details. It’s true that I’ve never waited long enough for it to show (can’t resist the temptation of trying shiny new stuff!) but I will check with a VM and asking a friend to wait for the notification to see if it works correctly.
My confusion came from the fact that the latest update-notifier-kde version was from Xenial, but I guess it has been merged elsewhere?
update-notifier-kde was discontinued as far as I know. Update Notifier is actually a daemon that runs in the background. If you read the wiki page I linked above, it mentions that it will pop-up a GTK notification (yes, even Kubuntu contains some GTK). That said, when in doubt, always check the source.