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How to remove stuck "terminating" ns deletions

June 2, 2026

Situation

When deleting namespaces, like

kubectl delete ns test

for some reason when you show namespaces

kubectl get ns

the status was stuck in "terminating" despite rebooting server and cluster.

Found an article and a solution that worked.  replace "test" with the NameSpaceName in the two locations in the command below:

kubectl get namespace test -o json   | tr -d "\\n" | sed "s/\\"finalizers\\": \\[[^]]\\+\\]/\\"finalizers\\": []/"   | kubectl replace --raw /api/v1/namespaces/test/finalize -f -

Source of solution --> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52369247/namespace-stucked-as-terminating-how-i-removed-it