Microsoft makes WSL Containers generally available on Windows

Microsoft announced on September 29, 2026 that WSL Containers is now generally available. The announcement was signed by Logan Iyer, Corporate Vice President, Windows Platform + Developer. The feature lets developers build and run Linux containers on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with Windows' own tools.

WSL Containers features

WSL Containers has two parts. The first is the wslc.exe command line tool for building, running and deploying containers, which can also be called as container.exe. The second is an API that lets native Windows applications manage containers programmatically. The general availability release adds container restart, file copying via tar archives, health checks, networking with wslc network connect and disconnect, real-time activity streaming with wslc events, configurable storage paths and mount support. According to the company, accessing Windows files from Linux environments is up to twice as fast. A new consomme network mode was also added for compatibility.

Management and security for IT teams

Organizations can use Microsoft Intune to turn access to WSL containers on or off entirely and to require that container images are pulled only from approved registries. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint surfaces process, file and network activity from containers connected to Windows hosts. Security teams can monitor containers on developer machines alongside other endpoint activity.

Tool support and roadmap

VS Code dev containers can use wslc as the container driver, and Aspire and the VS Code container extension have added support. Third-party tools such as Lazywslc, WSL Container Desktop and WSLc remote are also available. Compose support, which defines multiple containers in a single file, has not arrived yet; Microsoft has put a wslc compose command on the roadmap that is meant to work with existing compose.yaml files unchanged. To install, run wsl --update in a terminal or download the latest release from GitHub.

A new option for developers and IT teams

WSL Containers gives developers and IT teams who want to run Linux containers on Windows an option that does not require installing a separate desktop tool such as Docker Desktop. Organizations that manage container access through Intune and Defender may have one less tool to manage and license, though that depends on each organization's own setup. The announcement does not discuss Docker or licensing.

Without compose support, projects that run several services together will likely stay on their current tools for a while. The speed claim comes from the company's own announcement, so it is worth testing whether existing container workflows and images carry over smoothly in your own projects. To see how the tool holds up in real use, it is worth following evaluations from independent developers and researchers.

Sources: Windows Developer Blog: WSL Containers now generally available.