Gateway API component for the service networking model - Container Service for Kubernetes

Overview

The Gateway API models service networking in Kubernetes with an expressive, extensible, and role-oriented API. Benefits:

Role-oriented: API resources align with Kubernetes organizational roles.
Portable: Like Ingress, the Gateway API is a specification with multiple implementations.
Expressive: Dedicated resources for advanced traffic management such as canary and weighted releases, replacing unstructured Ingress annotations.
Extensible: Attach custom resources at various API layers for fine-grained configuration.

Usage

See Manage Gateway API to use the Gateway API with Gateway with Inference Extension or Application Load Balancer (ALB).

Changelog

May 2026

Version

Release date

Description

Impact

v1.5.1

May 25, 2025

TLSRoute, ListenerSet, HTTPRoute CORS Filter, BackendTLSPolicy, SupportedFeatures, and ReferenceGrant have reached General Availability (GA).
TLSRoute API v1alpha2 and v1alpha3 are deprecated. XListenerSet is removed from the Experimental channel, and TLS Listeners no longer support TCPRoute.
ListenerSet decouples Listener configuration from a Gateway, letting multiple teams share a Gateway.
Gateways now support client certificate validation and TLS Origination certificate selection.
See the community release notes.

The v1alpha2 TLSRoute API deprecation breaks the following components after upgrade: Service Mesh (ASM) 1.25 and earlier, Istio earlier than 1.29.2, and External DNS earlier than 0.21.0 with Gateway API enabled. Upgrade these before upgrading the Gateway API add-on.

June 2025

Version	Release date	Description	Impact
v1.3.0	June 5, 2025	Percentage-based traffic mirroring is now supported. See the community release notes.	This upgrade does not affect existing workloads.

December 2024

Version	Release date	Description	Impact
v1.2.1	December 26, 2024	This add-on version requires Kubernetes 1.32 or later. GRPCRoute and ReferenceGrant deprecate the `v1alpha2` version. HTTPRoute now supports backend timeouts. Configure the backend protocol with `BackendProtocol`. See the community release notes.	Deprecation of the `v1alpha2` API may break dependent components. Before upgrading, ensure all components use the new API version.

May 2024

Version	Release date	Description	Impact
v1.1.0	May 23, 2024	This add-on version requires Kubernetes 1.30 or later. Gateway, GatewayClass, and HTTPRoute deprecate the `v1alpha2` API version. GRPCRoute and ASM support reaches General Availability (GA). See the community release notes.	Deprecation of the `v1alpha2` API may break dependent components. Before upgrading, ensure all components use the new API version.

February 2024

Version	Release date	Description	Impact
v1.0.1	February 1, 2024	This add-on version requires Kubernetes 1.28 or later. Gateway, GatewayClass, and HTTPRoute have reached General Availability (GA) with a `v1` API version. You can now validate configuration with CEL. See the community release notes.	This upgrade does not affect existing workloads.

January 2023

Version	Release date	Description	Impact
v0.6.0	January 11, 2023	Initial release of the add-on.	This upgrade does not affect existing workloads.