Enabling Gateway API { #enable-gateway-api_{context} }¶

To route traffic using Gateway API, you must first enable the feature on your cluster. You can enable Gateway API by creating a GatewayClass custom resource, which triggers the Ingress Operator to provision the necessary controller and components.

After you successfully enable Gateway API, you can begin deploying gateways, assigning network addresses, and configuring listeners to control your network traffic flow.

Enabling Gateway API for the Ingress Operator¶

To configure Gateway API for use on your cluster, you must create a GatewayClass resource. During the creation of the GatewayClass resource, the Ingress Operator installs a lightweight Istio control plane, based on Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, in the openshift-ingress namespace.

Prerequisites

You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.
You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Procedure

Create a GatewayClass object:
1. Create a YAML file, openshift-default.yaml, that contains the following information:
  Example GatewayClass CR
```
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: GatewayClass
metadata:
  name: openshift-default
spec:
  controllerName: openshift.io/gateway-controller/v1
```
  - metadata.name: The name of your GatewayClass object. The name must consist of a maximum of 63 lowercase alphanumeric characters or hyphens (-). The name must also start and end with an alphanumeric character.
    
    Warning
    
    The controllerName value must be exactly as shown for the Ingress Operator to manage it. If you set this field to anything else, the Ingress Operator ignores the GatewayClass object and all associated Gateway, GRPCRoute, and HTTPRoute objects. The controller name is tied to the implementation of Gateway API in OpenShift Container Platform, and openshift.io/gateway-controller/v1 is the only controller name allowed.
2. Run the following command to create the GatewayClass resource:
```
$ oc create -f openshift-default.yaml
```
  Example output
```
gatewayclass.gateway.networking.k8s.io/openshift-default created
```

Verification

Verify that the GatewayClass CR has been accepted and the controller is successfully installed by running the following command:

$ oc get gatewayclass openshift-default -o yaml

Example output

# ...
status:
  conditions:
  - lastTransitionTime: "2026-05-15T10:00:00Z"
    message: The GatewayClass has been accepted
    reason: Accepted
    status: "True"
    type: Accepted
  - lastTransitionTime: "2026-05-15T10:00:00Z"
    message: Istio installed successfully
    reason: Installed
    status: "True"
    type: ControllerInstalled
  - lastTransitionTime: "2026-05-15T10:00:00Z"
    message: Istio CRDs are being managed by cluster-ingress-operator
    reason: ManagedByCIO
    status: "True"
    type: CRDsReady
# ...

Inspect the status.conditions block in the output. A healthy GatewayClass CR reports a status of True for the Accepted, ControllerInstalled, and CRDsReady conditions.