Application Gateway for Containers now supports Model Context Protocol routing through the new MCPRoute custom resource. Platform teams can publish MCP servers behind a stable hostname and path while centralizing TLS, JWT validation, Web Application Firewall protection, backend health monitoring, and routing policy at the gateway.
Azure update ID: 576388
Published: Nov 2, 2026
Status: In preview
Timeline: November 2026 Preview
Product: Application Gateway
Tag: Features
Category: Networking, Security
MCPRoute supports both direct routing to a single MCP server and aggregation of multiple independent servers behind one logical endpoint. For aggregated deployments, Application Gateway for Containers merges tool, resource, and prompt discovery responses, namespaces capability names to avoid collisions, and routes invocations to the backend that owns the selected capability.
- Expose one governed endpoint for MCP clients and Kubernetes-hosted MCP servers
- Aggregate capabilities from multiple MCP servers
- Session affinity for MCP servers that maintain in-memory session state
- Apply JWT validation, WAF, backend TLS, health checks, and cross-namespace references
Learn more:
- Model Context Protocol capabilities in Application Gateway for Containers
- Configure Model Context Protocol routing for Application Gateway for Containers