How do you list existing topics in a Kafka cluster?

The --list option on kafka-topics.sh returns every topic name in the cluster, which is usually the first command run when exploring an unfamiliar cluster:

kafka-topics.sh --list --bootstrap-server localhost:9092

The output is a plain list of topic names, including Kafka's own internal topics (like __consumer_offsets) unless filtered out. To see detail on a specific topic rather than just its name — partition count, replication factor, leader/ISR per partition — the follow-up command is --describe --topic <name>, which is typically the next step once --list has identified the topic of interest. The Admin API exposes the same functionality programmatically via AdminClient.listTopics() for applications that need to enumerate topics without shelling out to the CLI.

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