What you can do today to ensure your clusters are not impacted by the retirement of `gcr.io/istio-release` and `registry.istio.io`.

Istio is an open-source service mesh platform that helps developers connect, secure, and manage microservices-based applications. With features such as traffic management, security policies, and observability tools, Istio simplifies the complexities of microservices architecture, enabling developers to build resilient and scalable applications. Through documentation, tutorials, and community support, Istio provides developers with the tools and resources needed to implement service mesh patterns and improve the reliability and performance of their distributed systems.

Istio

Istio is retiring both the `gcr.io/istio-release` and `registry.istio.io/release` container registries by late 2026. The `registry.istio.io/release` proxy is being shut down because Cloudflare egress IPs trigger rate-limiting on free container hosting platforms. Users should migrate to `docker.io/istio` as soon as possible. Instructions are provided for migrating via `istioctl` (updating IstioOperator config or passing a CLI flag) and via Helm (updating the values file). Istio 1.30 users are most likely affected, as that version defaults to `registry.istio.io/release`.

An Update on Our Container Registry Migration