kubernetes retires ingress nginx — no more security patches
The Kubernetes project retired its widely used Ingress NGINX controller in March 2026, so clusters that still run it keep working but will never get another fix.
- end of life
- March 2026 — repository archived 2026-03-24
- platforms
- Kubernetes clusters running the community ingress-nginx controller
- move to
- Gateway API or another Ingress controller
what happened
- On November 11, 2025, Kubernetes SIG Network and the Security Response Committee announced Ingress NGINX would be retired, with best-effort maintenance continuing until March 2026.[1]
- After retirement there are no further releases, no bug fixes and no updates for any security vulnerabilities that may be discovered, and the GitHub repositories become read-only.[1]
- The kubernetes/ingress-nginx repository was archived by its owner on March 24, 2026 and is now read-only.[3]
- Existing deployments are not broken and Helm charts and container images remain available, so unless admins check, they may not know a cluster is affected.[1,2]
- The Kubernetes Steering and Security Response Committees described Ingress NGINX as critical infrastructure for about half of cloud native environments.[2]
- The committees said remaining on Ingress NGINX after retirement 'leaves you and your users vulnerable to attack' and that none of the alternatives are direct drop-in replacements.[2]
- Cluster admins can usually check for it with: kubectl get pods --all-namespaces --selector app.kubernetes.io/name=ingress-nginx[1,2]
- The project recommends migrating to Gateway API, or to another Ingress controller listed in the Kubernetes documentation.[1]
where sources differThe kubernetes.io posts give the retirement only as 'March 2026'. The 2026-03-24 date is when the GitHub repository was archived.
sources3
- 01Ingress NGINX Retirement: What You Need to Know ↗ primaryKubernetes (SIG Network and Security Response Committee)accessed 2026-10-21
- 02Ingress NGINX: Statement from the Kubernetes Steering and Security Response Committees ↗ primaryKubernetesaccessed 2026-10-21
- 03kubernetes/ingress-nginx (archived repository) ↗ primaryKubernetes on GitHubaccessed 2026-10-21