Unfortunately, AWS doesn't yet have a command like GKE's "gcloud container clusters get-credentials", which creates kubectl config for you. So, you need to create kubectl config file manually.

As mentioned in creating a kubeconfig for Amazon EKS document, you should get two things from the cluster:

1. Retrieve the endpoint for your cluster. Use this for the <endpoint-url> in your kubeconfig file.

   aws eks describe-cluster --cluster-name <cluster-name>  --query cluster.endpoint
   

2. Retrieve the certificateAuthority.data for your cluster. Use this for the <base64-encoded-ca-cert> in your kubeconfig file.

   aws eks describe-cluster --cluster-name <cluster-name>  --query cluster.certificateAuthority.data
   

Create the default kubectl folder if it does not already exist.

mkdir -p ~/.kube

Open your favorite text editor and paste the following kubeconfig code block into it.

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    server: <endpoint-url>
    certificate-authority-data: <base64-encoded-ca-cert>
  name: kubernetes
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: kubernetes
    user: aws
  name: aws
current-context: aws
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: aws
  user:
    exec:
      apiVersion: client.authentication.k8s.io/v1alpha1
      command: heptio-authenticator-aws
      args:
        - "token"
        - "-i"
        - "<cluster-name>"
        # - "-r"
        # - "<role-arn>"
      # env:
        # - name: AWS_PROFILE
        #   value: "<aws-profile>"

Replace the <endpoint-url> with the endpoint URL that was created for your cluster. Replace the <base64-encoded-ca-cert> with the certificateAuthority.data that was created for your cluster. Replace the <cluster-name> with your cluster name.

Save the file to the default kubectl folder, with your cluster name in the file name. For example, if your cluster name is devel, save the file to ~/.kube/config-devel.

Add that file path to your KUBECONFIG environment variable so that kubectl knows where to look for your cluster configuration.

export KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:~/.kube/config-devel

(Optional) Add the configuration to your shell initialization file so that it is configured when you open a shell.

For Bash shells on macOS:

echo 'export KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:~/.kube/config-devel' >> ~/.bash_profile

For Bash shells on Linux:

echo 'export KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG:~/.kube/config-devel' >> ~/.bashrc

Test your configuration.

kubectl get svc

Output:

NAME             TYPE        CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
svc/kubernetes   ClusterIP   10.100.0.1   <none>        443/TCP   1m

Note
If you receive the error "heptio-authenticator-aws": executable file not found in $PATH, then your kubectl is not configured for Amazon EKS. For more information, see Configure kubectl for Amazon EKS.