kubernetesupgradesPractitioner

Preparing for Bitnami Image Removal from ECR Public

5 min read AWS Containers BlogMay 18, 2026Reviewed for accuracy

Practitioner — Hands-on experience recommended

The impending removal of Bitnami images from Amazon ECR Public is a critical issue for anyone relying on these container images in production. After June 10th, 2026, any attempt to pull images from public.ecr.aws/bitnami/ will fail. This means that if you don’t act now, your deployments could face unexpected downtime when they attempt to refresh images due to crashes, scaling events, or CI/CD updates.

Currently, Bitnami manages 317 container image repositories on ECR Public. If a container needs to re-pull its image—whether due to a crash, restart, or a rolling update—it will fail if the image is still pointing to the public repository. To mitigate this risk, you must update your image URIs to point to a private ECR repository. This involves pulling the images from the public registry, tagging them appropriately, and pushing them to your own ECR repository. The process is straightforward, but it requires diligence to ensure all deployments are updated.

Keep in mind that these steps are only a temporary fix. No new Bitnami images will be published to ECR, meaning your images will become outdated over time. It's crucial to explore alternatives for these container images to avoid future issues. The transition to a private ECR repository is essential for maintaining operational stability beyond 2026.

Key takeaways

→Update your image URIs to point to your private ECR repository before June 10th, 2026.
→Use the provided bash scripts to automate the migration of Bitnami images to your ECR.
→Be aware that any event triggering a fresh image pull will fail if you haven't updated your image references.
→Consider finding alternative container images, as Bitnami will not publish new images to ECR.
→Monitor your deployments closely after migration to ensure they are pulling from the correct repository.

Why it matters

Failing to update your image URIs could lead to service disruptions in your Kubernetes deployments, impacting your application's availability and reliability.

Code examples

Bash

# Search your local project files
grep -r "public.ecr.aws/bitnami/" .

Bash

# Authenticate to your private ECR registry
aws ecr get-login-password --region <region> | docker login --username AWS 
  --password-stdin <your-account-id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com

Bash

# Pull, tag, and push
docker pull public.ecr.aws/bitnami/<image-name>:<tag>
docker tag public.ecr.aws/bitnami/<image-name>:<tag> 
  <your-account-id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/bitnami/<image-name>:<tag>
docker push <your-account-id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/bitnami/<image-name>:<tag>