Migrating from Ingress to Gateway API on Kubernetes

Kubernetes SIG Network retired Ingress NGINX this spring; best-effort maintenance ended in March 2026, and the project is now archived, with no more releases, bugfixes, or security patches. For any platform team still running it, that's not a future risk, it's a current one. It's forcing a shift that's been coming anyway: the Ingress API is stable and feature-frozen, while the Gateway API is emerging as the standard for expressive, role-based traffic management.

This session shows platform engineers and SREs how to migrate from Ingress to Gateway API, using Kong Operator as the reference implementation, including a live demo converting a production-style Ingress resource with Kong's open-source ingress2gateway tool and running it side-by-side with zero downtime.

We'll cover:

• How the Gateway API's role-based model (GatewayClass, Gateway, HTTPRoute) splits responsibilities between platform and application teams, and why it succeeds where Ingress annotations hit their limits
• A phased, zero-downtime cutover pattern: converting existing rules with ingress2gateway and running Ingress and Gateway API side by side until you're confident in the switch
• How Kong Operator automates day-2 operations — certificate rotation, latency-based autoscaling, zero-downtime upgrades — once you're standardized on Gateway API

You'll leave with a concrete migration pattern you can start applying to your own cluster right away.