Concepts and technologies are disclosed herein for management of forwarding tables at edge routers. A processor that executes a software defined networking controller can select an edge router associated with a networking environment. The edge router can access or use a forwarding table. The processor can obtain routing information associated with the edge router. The routing information can include forwarding table contents associated with the forwarding table and next hop information that can indicate communication paths associated with the edge router. The processor can analyze the routing information to determine next hops associated with the edge router, generate a next hop graph that represents the next hops, and initiate updating of the forwarding table such that the forwarding table only includes data that corresponds to the next hops.