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Migration Guide

Ingress NGINX End of Life

Your Comprehensive Migration Guide for Ingress NGINX Controller Retirement

Illustration of fading out NGINX logo

Critical Notice

Ingress NGINX Controller will be retired in March 2026 with no further security updates. Plan your migration strategy before hitting the deadline.

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The Problem

Ingress NGINX Is Retiring. Your Cluster Isn’t Ready.

On November 12, 2025, the Kubernetes SIG Network and Security Response Committee announced the upcoming retirement of the Ingress NGINX Controller. This affects thousands of Kubernetes clusters worldwide.

NGINX Timeline

The retirement stems from insufficient maintenance and accumulated technical debt. While existing deployments will continue to function, running unmaintained software with potential security vulnerabilities is not recommended for production environments.

Am I Affected?

Check if you're using Ingress NGINX Controller by running: 

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

Key Considerations

  • Security Priority

    With no security updates after March 2026, staying on Ingress NGINX poses significant security risks. Plan your migration well in advance of the deadline.

  • Feature Parity

    Not all Ingress NGINX features may have direct equivalents in your chosen alternative. Use the assessment tool below to identify potential gaps early.

  • Testing Strategy

    Thoroughly test your migration in staging environments that mirror production load patterns and edge cases.

Migration

Assess Your Migration Complexity

Before planning your migration strategy, understand exactly what Ingress NGINX features you're currently using and how complex your migration will be.

Ingress NGINX Migration Tool

Open source tool to analyze your current setup and generate migration recommendations

A migration report generated by Migration assessment tool

1. Install

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/traefik/ingress-nginx-migration/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

2. Run

ingress-nginx-migration

Your Migration Strategy

Choose your migration strategy based on your timeline, complexity, and long-term architecture goals:

Short-Term Path

Traefik's new Ingress NGINX Provider is a drop-in replacement offering the most comprehensive compatibility with existing Ingress NGINX configurations.

  • Native Ingress NGINX resource compatibility

  • Annotation mapping and conversion

  • Minimal configuration changes required

  • Gradual migration capabilities

Traefik NGINX Provider Documentation

  • Best for

    Quick migration with minimal configuration changes

  • Timeline

    Can be completed in a short time.

Long-Term Path

Gateway API represents the evolution of Kubernetes networking and is the official recommendation from the Kubernetes community.

  • Role-based configuration model

  • Enhanced security and multi-tenancy

  • Advanced traffic management

  • Vendor-agnostic future

Multiple implementations available:

  • Traefik Gateway API

  • Istio Gateway

  • Envoy Gateway

  • Cloud provider native solutions

Traefik Gateway API Documentation

  • Best for

    Future-proof architecture with modern features

  • Timeline

    May take months depending on complexity

Resources