Kubernetes networking has evolved substantially. Ingress provided a central HTTP(S)-focused entry point, but it bundled TLS, listeners, and application routing into a single object, leading to overlapping ownership and a growing reliance on vendor-specific Ingress Controller annotations.

The Gateway API represents a shift in design principles, introducing role-oriented resources that cleanly separate infrastructure, platform, and application concerns. Its portability, expressiveness, and extensibility create a consistent, shared API across implementations, reducing controller-specific behaviors and enabling clearer boundaries between teams.

Why switch now

• Further development of the Ingress API is effectively frozen. New feature work in Kubernetes networking is focused on the Gateway API, which is documented as the successor to Ingress and has stable core resources (Gateway, GatewayClass, HTTPRoute).
• The NGINX Ingress Controller is scheduled for retirement in March 2026. After that date, there will be no new releases, bug fixes, or security patches, so staying on it becomes an increasing operational risk.
• Gateway API standardizes capabilities that previously lived in vendor-specific annotations—things like header and method matching, traffic splitting, and request mirroring—so advanced routing no longer ties you to a single controller.
• It supports more than just HTTP(S): gRPC, TCP, UDP, and TLS routing are part of the spec, making it easier to handle mixed-protocol environments without bespoke, controller-specific config.
• Role-oriented resources (GatewayClass, Gateway, HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, and others) map cleanly to infra, platform, and application teams, improving RBAC boundaries and multi-tenancy compared to a single, overloaded Ingress resource.
• Production migrations from existing Ingress controllers to Gateway API take time. Teams need to learn the new resource model, and many vendor-specific annotations must be re-evaluated and mapped to Gateway API resources—starting now gives you room to migrate safely rather than under time pressure.