Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring

Summary

Ingress NGINX Retirement: What You Need to KnowBy Tabitha Sable (Kubernetes SRC) | Wednesday, November 12, 2025To prioritize the safety and security of the ecosystem, Kubernetes SIG Network and the Security Response Committee are announcing the upcoming retirement of Ingress NGINX. Best-effort maintenance will continue until March 2026. Afterward, there will be no further releases, no bugfixes, and no updates to resolve any security vulnerabilities that may be discovered. Existing deployments of Ingress NGINX will continue to function and installation artifacts will remain available.We recommend migrating to one of the many alternatives. Consider migrating to Gateway API, the modern replacement for Ingress. If you must continue using Ingress, many alternative Ingress controllers are listed in the Kubernetes documentation. Continue reading for further information about the history and current state of Ingress NGINX, as well as next steps.About Ingress NGINXIngress is the original user-friendly way to direct network traffic to workloads running on Kubernetes. (Gateway API is a newer way to achieve many of the same goals.) In order for an Ingress to work in your cluster, there must be an Ingress controller running. There are many Ingress controller choices available, which serve the needs of different users and use cases. Some are cloud-provider specific, while others have more general applicability.Ingress NGINX was an Ingress controller, developed early in the history of the Kubernetes project as an example implementation of the API. It became very popular due to its tremendous flexibility, breadth of features, and independence from any particular cloud or infrastructure provider. Since those days, many other Ingress controllers have been created within the Kubernetes project by community groups, and by cloud native vendors. Ingress NGINX has continued to be one of the most popular, deployed as part of many hosted Kubernetes platforms and within innumerable independe...