IL-0158 Linode · 2026-04-16kubernetes
From 11:45 UTC on 16 April 2026, LKE and LKE-E could not deploy clusters or nodes in any region, which also stopped customers from recycling nodes and autoscaling clusters. The investigation found that a credential had expired and was causing authentication failures; the monitoring update on the status page calls it an expired certificate that was then updated.
Linode's engineers created new credentials and deployed them. Nodes began provisioning again at 15:53 UTC, and the impact was mitigated at about 16:27 UTC after the credential rotation. The incident was declared resolved on 17 April. In the postmortem posted on 21 April, Linode said it was still investigating why the credential expired and would take preventive actions.
From 11:45 UTC on 16 April 2026, customers of Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE) and Linode Kubernetes Engine Enterprise (LKE-E) could not deploy new clusters or add new nodes to existing clusters. Because no new node could be deployed, node recycling and cluster autoscaling did not work either. The problem hit every region where LKE runs.
At 15:53 UTC nodes started to provision successfully again, though the service was not fully back and some customers were still affected.
Symptom ? Deploys failingScale-up failureCredentials unavailable
Root cause ? Certificate or credential expiry
The first status page update, saying the team was investigating an emerging issue affecting LKE and LKE-E in all regions, was posted at 13:20 UTC.
One expired credential stopped every operation that needs a new node, in all regions at once: new clusters, added nodes, node recycling and autoscaling.
same root cause · shared Node pool