I don't think it's ever been KDE.

Indeed. In fact, only recently the Fedora KDE version was elevated to "Edition" status and is now on the same tier as the Gnome version.

Most newer popular distros (Bazzite, CachyOS, Zorin, Asahi, etc.) default to KDE now, and it's very nice that Fedora's not only keeping up, but also providing the basis for some of them.

I've been very pleased with KDE on Fedora for the past ~five years.

It seems you're right, and now I'm wondering how I ever thought otherwise...

No worries. I started using Fedora around the 4-5 timeframe and am still using it 40 editions later -- time flies. To my memory, it's always been GNOME-first.

Indeed it is strange. Red Hat is more or less considered the corporate steward/benefactor of modern Gnome.

It's been a long, long time. I think Red Hat 8/9 (from 2002-2003) had a default KDE build. Even in Fedora Core 1 Gnome was default.

Now, there's a separate build to download for KDE. It's likely because Gnome is default install for Red Hat Enterprise Workstation.