Cloud Service Mesh support for the managed ISTIOD control plane on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) on Google Cloud is deprecated as of September 28, 2026, and…

Cloud Service Mesh support for the managed ISTIOD control plane on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) on Google Cloud is deprecated as of September 28, 2026, and support will end on March 1, 2028. After March 1, 2028, managed ISTIOD control plane components on GKE on Google Cloud will not receive updates, security patches, or support from Google Cloud, and workload sidecars on unmodernized clusters will fail and be unable to receive or send requests.

Google Cloud is transitioning managed Cloud Service Mesh with Istio APIs to the TRAFFIC_DIRECTOR control plane implementation using Istio APIs. As part of this transition, support will also end for any features that are incompatible with the TRAFFIC_DIRECTOR control plane.

To continue using managed Cloud Service Mesh on GKE, you must modernize your clusters by March 1, 2028:

1. Confirm that you affected.
2. Check your compatibility. Review the Supported features to confirm feature compatibility with the TRAFFIC_DIRECTOR control plane and evaluate a fleet's compatibility for control plane modernization.
3. Plan your modernization following the modernization guide.

For more details on the transition, see Managed control plane documentation and monitor the release notes for ongoing updates.