Changelog

This changelog lists all of the information for F5 NGINX Ingress Controller releases in 2026.

For older releases, check the changelogs for previous years: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.

NGINX Ingress Controller compatibility matrix

NGINX Ingress Controller supports the following versions of NGINX Plus and Kubernetes:

NIC version	Kubernetes versions tested	NIC Helm Chart version	NIC Operator version	NGINX / NGINX Plus version	End of Technical Support
5.5.0	1.29 - 1.36	2.6.0	3.6.0	1.31.1 / R37.0.1.1	-
5.4.3	1.28 - 1.35	2.5.3	3.5.4	1.31.1 / R37.0.1.1	May 21, 2028
5.3.4	1.27 - 1.35	2.4.4	3.4.4	1.29.5 / R36 P2	Feb 17, 2028
5.2.1	1.27 - 1.34	2.3.1	3.3.1	1.29.1 / R35	Oct 10, 2027
5.1.1	1.25 - 1.33	2.2.2	3.2.3	1.29.1 / R35	Aug 15, 2027
5.0.0	1.25 - 1.32	2.1.0	3.1.0	1.27.4 / R34	Apr 16, 2027
4.0.1	1.25 - 1.32	2.0.1	3.0.1	1.27.4 / R33 P2	Feb 7, 2027
3.7.2	1.25 - 1.31	1.4.2	2.4.2	1.27.2 / R32 P1	Nov 25, 2026
3.6.2	1.25 - 1.31	1.3.2	2.3.2	1.27.1 / R32 P1	Aug 19, 2026
3.5.2	1.23 - 1.30	1.2.2	2.2.2	1.27.0 / R32	May 31, 2026
3.4.3	1.23 - 1.29	1.1.3	2.1.2	1.25.4 / R31 P1	Feb 19, 2026

Supported F5 WAF for NGINX versions

To use F5 WAF for NGINX with NGINX Ingress Controller, you must have NGINX Plus.

NGINX Ingress Controller supports the following versions of F5 WAF for NGINX:

NIC Version	NAP-WAF Version	Config Manager	Enforcer
5.5.0	37.0+5.635.1	5.13.1	5.13.1
5.4.3	37.0+5.635.1	5.13.1	5.13.1
5.3.4	35+5.527.0	5.11.2	5.11.2
5.2.1	35+5.527.0	5.9.0	5.9.0
5.1.1	35+5.498	5.8.0	5.8.0
5.0.0	34+5.342	5.6.0	5.6.0
4.0.1	33+5.264	5.5.0	5.5.0
3.7.2	32+5.1	5.3.0	5.3.0
3.6.2	32+5.48	5.2.0	5.2.0

5.5.0

29 May 2026

Release 5.5.0 focuses on key enhancements for security, performance, flexibility, and migration from ingress-nginx to F5 NGINX Ingress Controller.

This release adds new capabilities and additional security features, expands support for Kubernetes Ingress resources, and introduces more annotations to make migrations from ingress-nginx easier, including support for External Authentication.

Major highlights include:

External Authentication support: External Authentiation is now supported for both Ingress and VirtualServer resources. Based on analysis of the ingress-nginx project, ExternalAuth is one of the most common ingress-nginx use cases and has been a frequent request from users migrating to F5 NGINX Ingress Controller.
WAF IP Intelligence support: WAF IP Intelligence can now automatically block or limit access from IP addresses with poor reputations, using real-time threat intelligence for categories such as botnets, Windows exploits, and web attacks.
mTLS support for Ingress: Mutual TLS for ingress and egress traffic is now supported on the Ingress resource.
Additional annotation support: This release adds support for more annotations, including add-header, add_header_inherit, proxy-redirect-from, and proxy-redirect-to.
Improved startup performance at scale: NIC startup time has been significantly improved for environments with hundreds or thousands of configured resources. In a large-scale test environment with 100 regular Ingresses, 250 master Ingresses, 1,000 minion Ingresses, and 100 VirtualServers, startup time went from minutes to seconds.
Expanded VirtualServerRoute path matching: VirtualServerRoute now supports multiple regular expression paths, making routing configurations more flexible.
WAF Policy support for Ingress: F5 WAF Policy resources no longer requires VirtualServer and can now be associated directly with Ingress resources, enabling customers to use advanced WAF capabilities while continuing to use standard Kubernetes Ingress.
Optional Host support: Host field in Ingress is now optional through an opt-in approach. This enables IP-based routing for environments that do not use DNS, such as test environments and labs, while preserving host-based routing as the standard Kubernetes routing model.

Features

9450 Add waf policy support to ingress object
9635 Add egress mtls policy to ingress object
9521 Add external auth policy to ingress
9519 Add external auth policy to vs/vsr
9711 Improve pod startup times
9671 Add support for multiple regex paths in a single vsr
9743 Add support for add_header in configmap and ingress
9628 Attach ingressmtls policy to ingress
9547 Support add_header_inherit directive
9622 Support waf ip intelligence
9728 Support empty host ingress
9862 Add support for proxy_redirect in ingress
9740 Add nginx agent 3.x waf support
9778 Add path normalisation

Fixes

9332 Fix authentication issue in external pr workflow
9406 Fix external pr branch creation
9452 Missing policies on ingress will return 500
9486 Fix dereference panic
9613 Fix oidc policy leaking into non-referenced locations
9791 Implement policy support checks for ingress resources
9877 Improve transportserver and nginx.org/limit-req-key annotation
9955 Fix overly restrictive validation in cors policy fields

Dependencies

9403, 9446, 9445, 9466, 9840, 9476, 9530, 9569, 9660, 9661, 9669, 9697, 9726, 9754, 9776, 9777, 9990, 9491, 9807, 9830, 9703, 9966, 9983, 10004, 10051 & 9987 Bump Go dependencies
9378, 9430, 9444, 9608, 9607, 9606, 9964, 9881, 10012, 9474, 9558, 9567, 9568, 9643, 9577, 9637, 9642, 9663, 9659, 9658, 9680, 9802, 9685, 9683, 9701, 9699, 9736, 9772, 9793, 9849, 9880, 9829, 9896, 9910, 9911, 9982, 10011, 10009, 10010, 9940, 10048 & 10047 Bump Docker dependencies
9526 Update dependency more-itertools to v11 (main)

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.5.0 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.5.0 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.5.0 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.6.0 of the chart.

Supported platforms

We will provide technical support for NGINX Ingress Controller on any Kubernetes platform that is currently supported by its provider and that passes the Kubernetes conformance tests. This release was fully tested on the following Kubernetes versions: 1.29 - 1.36.

5.4.3

22 May 2026

Fixes

9878 Improve transportserver and nginx.org/limit-req-key annotation - release 5.4

Dependencies

9870, 998x Update NGINX OSS to 1.31.1, NGINX Plus to R37.0.1.1, WAF to 5.13.1 & NGINX Agent to latest version
9851 Update Go version to 1.26.3
9841, 9833, 9818, 9831, 9813 & 9974 Bump Go dependencies
9926, 9924, 9814, 9948, 9868, 9898, 9832, 9870, 9884 & 9947 Bump Docker dependencies

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.4.3 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.4.3 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.4.3 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.5.3 of the chart.

9510 Warn user when policy on ingress needs custom resources enabling
9620 Fix oidc policy leaking into non-referenced locations
9792 Implement policy support checks for Ingress resources

Dependencies

9480, 9541, 9596, 9595, 9538, 9670, 9755, 9666, 9786 & 9688 Bump Go dependencies
9493, 9492, 9494, 9764, 9784, 9515, 9566, 9651, 9648, 9664, 9604, 9731, 9668, 9705, 9704, 9707, 9763, 9774, 9737, 9687 & 9665 Bump Docker dependencies
9583 Update go to v1.26.2, nginx to 1.29.8, waf to 5.12.1

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.4.2 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.4.2 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.4.2 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.5.2 of the chart.

9463 Missing policies on ingress will return 500

Dependencies

9456 Update NGINX OSS to 1.29.7, NGINX Plus to R36 P3 & WAF to 5.12
9438 Update NGINX Agent to 3.8
9441 Bump Go dependencies
9397, 9442, 9467 & 9395 Bump Docker dependencies

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.4.1 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.4.1 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.4.1 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.5.1 of the chart.

Supported Platforms

5.4.0

20 Mar 2026

Release 5.4.0 focuses on making migrations from ingress-nginx easier by providing key features users need most when transitioning to NGINX Ingress Controller:

CORS support: A new Policy introduces CORS configuration that works seamlessly with both Ingress and VirtualServer resources, giving users a flexible, native way to manage cross-origin policies.
Expanded Annotation support: This release adds compatibility with a broader set of ingress-nginx annotations, reducing the friction of migrating existing workloads without requiring immediate resource rewrites.
Access control for Ingress resources: Access control policies are now compatible with kind: Ingress, bringing parity with VirtualServer and allowing teams to enforce consistent access policies across resource types during migration.
Configuration resilience and validation: Improved configuration validation and resilience mechanisms help catch misconfigurations early and ensure more stable reloads, reducing downtime risk.
Label-based VirtualServerRoute selection: VirtualServers can now select VirtualServerRoutes using label selectors instead of explicit references, enabling more dynamic and scalable routing configurations without tight coupling between resources

Features

8656 Add nginx.org/ssl-redirect annotation support
8711 Add nginx.org/http-redirect-code annotation and configmap support
8720 Add nginx.org/app-root annotation support
8861 Initialise the $service variable early in the server block
8168 Add custom time format to json and text logging
8936 Add routeselector labels to virtualserver and virtualserverroutes
8972 Add proxy-next-upstream directives to ingress annotations
8555 Support loadbalancerclass in helm chart
9209 Add framework to attach policy cr's to ingress with annotations
9148 Add CORS policy to VirtualServer/VirtualServerRoute
9280 Add AccessControl to ingress via policy
9292 Add CORS to ingress via policy
9316 Enable session persistence for nginx oss config
9288 Config rollback manager
8831 Implement zone size templates in configmap for oidc templates

Fixes

8689 Update stub_status client path
8722 Update service template for ipfamilies
8740 Add more validation on rewrite-target
8869 Refactor getvalidtarget to return a list of items
8949 Ensure NGINX metric show up in NGINX One console
9140 Invalid vs with oidc policy applied at vs spec with trusted cert
9213 Remove unexpected ";" using zone-sync in the configmap while disabling ipv6

Dependencies

9059 Update nginx agent to 3.7
9176 Update go to v1.26
9218, 9404, 9344, 9240, 9350, 9159, 9005, 8963, 9111, 8951, 9095, 9158, 9157, 8850, 9121, 9221, 9305, 9112, 9039, 9267, 9359 & 8622 Bump Go dependencies
9322, 9349, 9345, 9301, 9303, 9294, 9243, 9115, 9103, 8877, 9002, 9298, 8821, 9043, 8881, 8748, 9142, 9365, 8658, 9318, 9193, 9323, 9304, 9026, 9312, 9027, 9302, 9028, 9336, 9105, 9297 & 9093 Bump Docker dependencies

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.4.0 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.4.0 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.4.0 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.5.0 of the chart.

9177 Update go to v1.26
9131,9163,9162,9164,9114,9099,9104 & 9101 Bump Go dependencies
9161,9130,9136,9133,9143, 9113,9100, 9098, 9129, 9152, 9180,9097, 9128 & 9151 Bump Docker dependencies

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.3.4 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.3.4 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.3.4 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.4.4 of the chart.

9049, 9074, 9050, 9047, 9035, 9031, 9071, 9036, 9034, 9006, 8997, 9030, 9048, 9068, 9007, 9069, 9008 & 9019 Bump Docker dependencies
9072, 9040, 9037 & 9009 Bump Go dependencies
9075 Update nginx versions 1.29.5 & R36 P2

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.3.3 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.3.3 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.3.3 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.4.3 of the chart.

8895, 8894, 8886, 8769, 8864, 8954, 8855, 8752, 8804, & 8766 Bump Go dependencies
8955, 8833, 8885, 8967, 8824, 8845, 8906, 8754, 8753, 8765, 8893, 8911, 8778, 8843, 8927, 8983, 8786, 8822, 8926, 8982, 8768, 8924, 8980, 8798, 8863, 8884, 8799, 8806, 8873, 8943, 8793, 8853, 8784, 8851, 8905, 8931, 8964, 8785, 8791, 8852, 8767, 8779, & 8854 Bump Docker dependencies
8879, 8875, 8865, & 8839 Update F5 WAF components

Upgrade

For NGINX, use the 5.3.2 images from our DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery or Quay.io.
For NGINX Plus, use the 5.3.2 images from the F5 Container registry or build your own image using the 5.3.2 source code.
For Helm, use version 2.4.2 of the chart.

Supported platforms

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