In March 2026, Kubernetes will retire Ingress NGINX, a piece of critical infrastructure for about half of cloud native environments. The retirement of Ingress NGINX was announced for March 2026, after years of public warnings that the project was in dire need of contributors and maintainers. There will be no more releases for bug fixes, security patches, or any updates of any kind after the project is retired. This cannot be ignored, brushed off, or left until the last minute to address.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. With Kubernetes, developers can deploy applications across clusters of machines, ensuring high availability, scalability, and resilience. Developers can learn about Kubernetes' architecture, core concepts, and deployment strategies, and gain hands-on experience with managing containerized workloads using Kubernetes.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes will retire Ingress NGINX in March 2026 after years of maintainer shortages, affecting approximately 50% of cloud native environments. No further security patches or updates will be released after retirement. Users must immediately begin migrating to alternatives like Gateway API or third-party Ingress controllers, as remaining on Ingress NGINX post-retirement creates serious security vulnerabilities. Existing deployments will continue functioning but without security support, making proactive migration planning critical.

Ingress NGINX: Statement from the Kubernetes Steering and Security Response Committees