With ingress-nginx retiring in 2026, this post explores the technical shift to Gateway API and evaluates kgateway as a production-grade successor.

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ingress-nginx is retiring in March 2026, forcing Kubernetes users to migrate. The Gateway API offers a standardized replacement with better expressiveness, role-based resource separation (GatewayClass, Gateway, HTTPRoute), and native support for advanced routing. kgateway emerges as a strong implementation choice due to its 7-year production history, efficient krt-based control plane that handles 10,000+ routes, and native AI/LLM traffic support. The article provides a complete Pulumi example deploying kgateway on DigitalOcean, explains cross-namespace routing with ReferenceGrant, compares four major Gateway API implementations, and notes Chainguard's maintenance fork as a temporary bridge for teams needing more migration time.

How to Move to the Gateway API: post ingress-nginx Retirement

The short-term option: Chainguard’s ingress-nginx fork