🚨 Kubernetes Alert: Ingress NGINX Is Retiring — The End of an Era for Cluster Traffic

Kevin Evans
Nov 13
2 min read

If you run Kubernetes, this is big: the Kubernetes SIG Network team just announced that Ingress NGINX will retire in March 2026.

For years, it’s been the backbone of Kubernetes ingress — quietly routing billions of requests across the world. Now, it’s reaching end-of-life, and the community needs to move fast.

Webpage with text "Ingress NGINX Controller" and "Retired Soon" in bold red, overlaid diagonally. Features links and icons at the top.

🧩 What’s Happening — and Why It Matters

Ingress NGINX isn’t being abandoned because it failed. It’s retiring because it succeeded beyond what a small team could sustain.

Despite powering massive production environments, the project has had only one or two volunteer maintainers — not enough for something that sits at the edge of nearly every Kubernetes cluster.

Some once-powerful features (like custom NGINX snippets) have also turned into potential security risks, adding complexity to long-term support.

The result:

⚠️ Best-effort maintenance until March 2026
🚫 After that: no patches, no new features, no security updates
📦 The repo will remain available, but in read-only mode

Your workloads won’t break overnight, but the longer you wait to migrate, the higher your risk exposure becomes.

🧭 The Path Forward: Migrate Now

If you’re still using Ingress NGINX, it’s time to start planning your migration.

Step 1: Check where it’s running

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces --kubectl get pods --all-namespaces --selector app.kubernetes.io/name=ingress-nginx

Step 2: Explore your migration path

The Gateway API is the official next-generation standard for Kubernetes networking — modular, role-based, and designed for both ingress controllers and service meshes.

Step 3: Choose your next ingress controller

Gateway API → Modern, scalable, and future-proof
Traefik → Cloud-native simplicity and automatic HTTPS
HAProxy Ingress → Enterprise-grade performance and advanced routing
Envoy-based controllers (Contour, Emissary-Ingress) → Deep observability and resilient traffic management

Step 4: Start early

The 2026 deadline feels far away — until it’s not. Begin testing migrations now so you can validate configurations, performance, and observability before flipping production.

💡 Code to Cloud Take

At Code to Cloud, we see this as more than just a retirement.

It’s a signal of Kubernetes maturity — a shift toward more sustainable, secure, and maintainable infrastructure.

Ingress NGINX helped define cloud-native networking as we know it. Now, projects like the Gateway API are taking that foundation into the next era of scalability and innovation.

If you’re still running Ingress NGINX, don’t wait until March 2026. Start modernizing your ingress strategy today — and set your clusters up for the future.