Seems like this issue went stale after implementing Robolectric support, so it's not too clear...: https://github.com/kotest/kotest/issues/189

A reason why it may not receive much attention is from the JUnit 5 bridge not working on API < 26

There is experimental support for Android instrumentation tests, which requires some additional configuration & dependencies. Furthermore, because JUnit 5 is built on Java 8 from the ground up, its instrumentation tests will only run on devices running Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer. Older phones will skip the execution of these tests completely, marking them as "ignored".

From https://github.com/mannodermaus/android-junit5

You mean only for instrumentation tests, but for espresso tests run in robolectric there's the same problem?

Roboelectric really need to provide a test-framework agnostic runner for this to work 100%. Their runner is heavily tied into junit5. Of course they may reason it's not worth their time given that most people are using junit5

So even the current Robolectric support in Kotest isn't 100%, or are you talking about the androidx runner?

Well robo should work, I'm just saying that there may be edge cases.