What you can do today to ensure your clusters are not impacted by the retirement of `gcr.io/istio-release`.

Istio is an open-source service mesh platform that helps developers connect, secure, and manage microservices-based applications. With features such as traffic management, security policies, and observability tools, Istio simplifies the complexities of microservices architecture, enabling developers to build resilient and scalable applications. Through documentation, tutorials, and community support, Istio provides developers with the tools and resources needed to implement service mesh patterns and improve the reliability and performance of their distributed systems.

Istio

Istio images will no longer be available at gcr.io/istio-release starting January 1st, 2027, due to changes in Istio's funding model. A new registry, registry.istio.io, has been set up as the replacement. It is not yet production-ready but is expected to be by April 2026. Users are encouraged to update test and development clusters to pull from the new registry now. Instructions are provided for migrating using istioctl, Helm, and private mirror setups.

Istio is Migrating Container Registries