<p>Is there a compatibility mapping Istio - Kubernetes - couldn't find one.
Istio 1.7 release notes mention needs K8s 1.16+, but nothing with Istio 1.6 or Istio 1.8</p>

Sam-T
<p><a href="https://istio.io/latest/about/supported-releases/#support-status-of-istio-releases" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Support status of Istio releases</a> is what you looking for.
<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/SdTfK.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/SdTfK.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>For istio 1.9 you can use <a href="https://preliminary.istio.io/latest/docs/setup/getting-started/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Istio Prelim 1.9 website</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>These steps require you to have a cluster running a compatible version
of Kubernetes (<strong>1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19</strong>). You can use any supported
platform, for example Minikube or others specified by the
platform-specific setup instructions.</p>
</blockquote>
