How the k8s.gcr.io Freeze Impacts Your Kubernetes Clusters and What to Do Next

On April 3, 2023, the old image registry k8s.gcr.io was frozen, and Kubernetes and related project images will no longer be pushed there.

The new registry registry.k8s.io has replaced the old one and has been generally available for several months. A blog post introduced its benefits to the community and announced that future Kubernetes releases will not be available in the old registry.

https://kubernetes.io/blog/2022/11/28/registry-k8s-io-faster-cheaper-ga/

What does this change mean for contributors?

If you maintain a sub‑project, you need to update your YAML manifests and Helm charts to use the new registry.

What does this change mean for end users?

Kubernetes 1.27 will not be released to the old registry.

From April onward, patch releases for 1.24, 1.25, and 1.26 will no longer be published to the old registry; see the timeline for the final patch versions.

Starting with 1.25, the default image registry is set to registry.k8s.io. This value can be overridden in kubeadm and kubelet, but attempts to set it to k8s.gcr.io after April will fail because the images will not appear in the old registry.

If you want to improve cluster reliability, eliminate dependence on the new registry, or run Kubernetes in a network with restricted external traffic, consider hosting a local image registry; some cloud providers may offer managed solutions.

Migration Timeline

k8s.gcr.io freeze: April 3, 2023

Kubernetes 1.27 expected release: April 12, 2023

Last 1.23 version using k8s.gcr.io: 1.23.18

Last 1.24 version using k8s.gcr.io: 1.24.12

Last 1.25 version using k8s.gcr.io: 1.25.8

Last 1.26 version using k8s.gcr.io: 1.26.3

Next Steps

Ensure your clusters do not rely on the old registry. For example, you can run the following command to list images used by pods:

$ kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o jsonpath="{.items[*].spec.containers[*].image}" | tr -s '[[:space:]]' '
' | sort | uniq -c

Check for any other dependencies on the old registry to keep your clusters healthy and up‑to‑date.