Istio is Migrating Container Registries

Due to changes in Istio’s funding model, Istio images will no longer be available at gcr.io/istio-release starting January 1st, 2027. That is, clusters that reference images hosted on gcr.io/istio-release might fail to create new pods in 2027.

In fact, we are fully migrating all Istio artifacts out of Google Cloud, including Helm charts. Future communications will cover the migration of Helm charts and other artifacts. This post will focus on what you can do today in response to the 2027 container registry migration.

Am I affected?

By default, Istio installations use Docker Hub (docker.io/istio) as their container registry, but many users choose to use the gcr.io/istio-release mirror. You can check whether you are using the mirror using the following command.

$ kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o json \
    | jq -r '.items[] | select(.spec.containers[].image | startswith("gcr.io/istio-release")) | "\(.metadata.namespace)/\(.metadata.name)"'

The above command will list all the pods that use images hosted on gcr.io/istio-release. If there are any such pods, you will likely need to migrate.

What to do today

Although we plan to keep images available on gcr.io/istio-release until late 2026, we have set up registry.istio.io as the new home for Istio images. Please migrate to using registry.istio.io as soon as possible.

Using istioctl

If you install Istio using istioctl, you can update your IstioOperator configuration as follows:

# istiooperator.yaml
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
spec:
  # ...
  hub: registry.istio.io/release
  # Everything else can stay the same unless you reference `gcr.io/istio-release` images elsewhere

and install Istio using this configuration

$ istioctl install -f istiooperator.yaml

Alternatively, you can pass in the registry as a command line argument

$ istioctl install --set hub=registry.istio.io/release # the rest of your arguments

Using Helm

If you use Helm to install Istio, update your values file to have the following:

# ...
hub: registry.istio.io/release
global:
  hub: registry.istio.io/release
# Everything else can stay the same unless you reference `gcr.io/istio-release` images elsewhere

Then, update your Helm installation with your new values file.

Private mirrors

Your organization might pull images from gcr.io/istio-release, push them to a private registry, and reference the private registry in your Istio installation. This process will still work, but you will have to pull from registry.istio.io/release instead of gcr.io/istio-release.