A recent DEV Community post details a proof‑of‑concept that resolves the difficulties of exposing the Kubernetes Gateway API from a multi‑tenant Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster through Azure Application Gateway. The author encountered failing health probes, unhealthy backend status, and connection timeouts, problems compounded by limited documentation for this architecture. By deploying two sample Nginx applications, a dedicated health‑responder pod, an Istio‑based shared gateway, and per‑namespace HTTPRoutes, the solution demonstrates a self‑service routing model where each tenant manages its own routes while leveraging a common gateway infrastructure.

This approach is strategically significant because Ingress‑NGINX will be retired in March 2026, and Azure Kubernetes Service product lead Ahmed Sabbour has confirmed that AKS Application Routing will transition to Istio and the Gateway API in the first half of 2026. Early adoption of the Gateway API therefore positions organizations to align with the broader Kubernetes ecosystem direction, reduce future migration effort, and improve multi‑tenant traffic management on Azure.