How to delete multiple topics in Apache Kafka

Yes you can use regex-like expressions when deleting topics with the kafka-topics.sh tool:

For example, to delete all topics starting with giorgos-:

./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --delete --topic 'giorgos-.*'

Using the Admin APIs, you can also delete several topics at once, see AdminClient.deleteTopics

Please add single quote ('giorgos-.* ') if it complains like no matches found: giorgos-.*

./bin/kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper localhost:2181 --delete --topic 'giorgos-.*'

Just to add to the accepted answer, the * wildcard needs to be preceded by '.'

In my experience:

--delete --topic '_confluent-controlcenter-5-3-1-1-.*' works

--delete --topic '_confluent-controlcenter-5-3-1-1-*' DOESNT work

Note: I would've added this as a comment but don't have enough rep.

In cases where regex is not possible we can use a comma seperated list of topic names for the deletion of topics.

kafka-topics.sh --zookeeper 10.0.0.160:2181 --delete --topic giorgos-topic1,giorgos-topic2,giorgos-topic3,...

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