Location Matching in Nginx

From the Nginx cheat sheet · Location Blocks & Rewrites · verified Jul 2026

Location Matching

Different types of location matching

nginx
# Exact match
location = /exact {
    # Only matches /exact
}

# Prefix match
location /prefix {
    # Matches /prefix, /prefix/path, etc.
}

# Regex match
location ~ \.php$ {
    # Case-sensitive regex
}

# Regex case-insensitive
location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png)$ {
    # Case-insensitive regex
}
🎯 Exact match (=) has highest priority
📝 Regex locations are evaluated in order
🔍 Use ^~ to prevent regex matching
⚡ Order matters for regex locations

More Nginx tasks

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