With the Kubernetes ecosystem moving toward Gateway API as the standard for traffic routing, organizations face a critical transition. The planned retirement of Ingress-NGINX in March 2026 accelerates this shift, leaving many teams to figure out how to migrate safely from traditional Ingress resources to the more flexible Gateway API. Enter Ingress2Gateway 1.0—a stable, tested migration assistant designed to bridge this gap.
The Gateway API Migration Challenge
Migrating from Ingress to Gateway API is not a straightforward lift-and-shift. The Ingress API is intentionally simple, but implementations like Ingress-NGINX extend its capabilities through a maze of annotations, ConfigMap settings, and custom resources (CRDs). This often results in esoteric configuration that is difficult to replicate in Gateway API’s modular design. Gateway API offers built-in support for role-based access control (RBAC), extensibility, and a more structured API—but the mapping of legacy Ingress behavior can be daunting.
Without proper tooling, teams risk introducing routing errors or missing critical functionality during migration. That’s why SIG Network developed Ingress2Gateway: to automate the translation process while surfacing potential pitfalls.
Introducing Ingress2Gateway 1.0
Today, SIG Network proudly announces the 1.0 release of Ingress2Gateway—a curated migration assistant that converts Ingress resources, including implementation-specific annotations, into equivalent Gateway API manifests. This release marks a significant step forward in making Gateway API adoption safe and predictable.
Enhanced Ingress-NGINX Annotation Support
The most impactful improvement in 1.0 is expanded coverage of Ingress-NGINX annotations. The previous iteration supported only three annotations; the 1.0 release now handles over 30 common annotations, including CORS, backend TLS, regex-based matching, and path rewrites. This ensures that most real-world configurations can be translated without manual intervention.
Comprehensive Integration Testing
Ingress2Gateway 1.0 goes beyond simple YAML-to-YAML conversion. Each supported annotation and representative combinations undergo rigorous controller-level integration tests. These tests:
- Spin up a live Ingress-NGINX controller
- Provision multiple Gateway API controllers (e.g., NGINX Gateway Fabric, Istio, etc.)
- Apply Ingress resources with implementation-specific configurations
- Translate the Ingress manifests using Ingress2Gateway and apply the generated Gateway API files
- Verify that routing behavior—such as redirects, rewrites, and traffic splitting—is identical between the original and translated setup
This behavioral equivalence testing catches edge cases and unexpected defaults that could otherwise lead to production incidents. By testing on live clusters, the team ensures that the translation is not only syntactically correct but also functionally accurate.
Improved Notification and Error Handling
Migration is rarely a one-click process. The 1.0 release refines how Ingress2Gateway surfaces subtleties and untranslatable behavior. Clear, actionable notifications replace vague warnings, helping users understand exactly what configuration was lost or needs manual adjustment. This transparency allows teams to proceed with confidence, knowing they can address gaps without guesswork.
How Ingress2Gateway Works
Ingress2Gateway is designed as a migration assistant rather than a one-shot replacement tool. Its workflow follows these steps:
- Input – Provide existing Ingress resources (YAML or from a live cluster).
- Translation – The tool parses all Ingress rules and implementation-specific annotations, mapping them to Gateway API equivalents (HTTPRoute, Gateway, etc.).
- Validation – It flags unsupported or partially translatable configuration with clear explanations.
- Output – Generates the corresponding Gateway API manifests, ready for review and application.
Teams can iterate: translate, test, adjust, and repeat until the new configuration matches the old behavior. This incremental approach reduces risk and builds familiarity with Gateway API concepts.
Looking Ahead
Ingress2Gateway 1.0 lays the foundation for a smoother networking transition. The SIG Network plans to continue expanding annotation coverage and adding support for more ingress controllers beyond Ingress-NGINX. As the community adopts Gateway API, tools like Ingress2Gateway will be essential for preserving existing investments while modernizing infrastructure.
For organizations facing the March 2026 deadline, now is the time to begin the migration journey. Ingress2Gateway provides a safe, well-tested path forward—one annotation at a time.