Linux WSL container is now available for public preview on Windows 11

At Microsoft Build 2026, we introduced WSL containers, bringing Linux container development directly into Windows through the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Containers have become a foundational part of modern development – from cloud-native applications and AI workloads to testing and deployment pipelines and WSL containers simplify this experience by providing a built-in, enterprise-ready way to create, run, and manage Linux containers on Windows, without requiring additional third-party tooling.

With a new container CLI for end-to-end container workflows and an API that enables Windows applications to programmatically leverage Linux containers, WSL containers make it easier for developers and organizations to build, test, and run containerized workloads while benefiting from the security, manageability, and integration of the Windows platform.

You can now access the WSL container feature in our latest pre-release of WSL! You can install this release right away by running wsl --update --pre-release, or by downloading and installing it directly from GitHub.

Overview​

WSL container adds two new features to WSL: A built in Linux container CLI and an API for Windows applications to run Linux containers as part of their app logic.

WSL container CLI –​

When you update to the latest WSL version, you will get a new binary on your path: wslc.exe. You can use this binary to do your full Linux container development workflows, including running, debugging, testing and more!

This CLI tool has a familiar format and capabilities, meaning you can use your existing muscle memory when running Linux containers. For example you can run a full Linux desktop in a container and connect to it like so: wslc run -d --name=webtop -e PUID=1000 -e PGID=1000 -e TZ=Etc/UTC -p 3000:3000 -p 3001:3001 lscr.io/linuxserver/webtop:ubuntu-kde, or check your GPU access with a CUDA script: wslc run --rm --gpus all pytorch/pytorch:2.5.1-cuda12.4-cudnn9-runtime python -c "import torch; print(torch.cuda.is_available()); print(torch.cuda.get_device_name(0))". Lastly this also includes a built in alias for container.exe which just runs wslc.exe so you can use the container command or wslc, whichever you prefer.

WSL container API​

Windows applications can now also directly use containers as part of their application logic. WSL now ships a Nuget package that is available at nuget.org and also on the WSL releases page. This includes support for C, C++ and C#.

Now your native Windows applications can make use of Linux for their production workflows. This can be especially useful for reusing existing Linux specific code, taking cloud applications and running them locally, or containing a Linux process’ access to resources on the host.

This API also integrates with MSBuild and CMake, so you can just add a few lines to your project files and the container build and deploy steps can all be part of your application’s build process – no manual steps required! Git clone and try a sample for yourself or check out the full API reference!

Learn more and see demos​

You can view this presentation from BUILD 2026 to learn more about the use cases and see demos of these features in action. Additionally you can visit our docs page to get in depth guides and sample code.

Integration with enterprise tools​

We are making sure that WSL’s great integration with enterprise tooling extends to WSL container as well.

Monitor security events in containers with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE)​

WSL’s existing MDE plugin is updated to also be aware of Linux container events, providing you the same coverage whether you are using a WSL distro or containers. Currently this feature is available as part of a private preview which you can sign up for here.

Manage WSL container settings with Intune​

We are also adding new management settings for WSL container. You will be able to control whether people can use WSL distros, or containers in your organization, and also specify an allowlist of which container registries can be used to pull new container images. One of our big aims for this area is to help address a top customer ask of: “How can I control which distros/Linux images are allowed in my organization?”, using WSL container and the registry allowlist makes that easier. This is available today using GPO and an ADMX policy and will have official support in Intune dashboards within the next few weeks.

VS code dev containers​

Many enterprises also depend on tools like VS code dev containers, and WSLc support has been added in 0.462.0-pre-release. This is in pre-release right now but will soon be moving to general availability. To set up this functionality open the VS Code dev container settings, find the “Docker Path” setting and change that to be wslc.

Further WSL improvements​

As we are building out the WSL container feature, we are also making huge improvements to the underlying technology that powers both WSL and WSL container. This includes:

• A new default file system for WSL container: ‘virtiofs’ that makes Windows file access 2x faster!
• A new default networking mode for WSL container: ‘consomme’ which aims to improve compatibility.
  • Compatibility is a tough issue since there are tons of different networking setups between VPNs, proxies and more. This is an experimental networking mode that aims to solve some of these issues. The simple explanation is that Consomme relays Linux network traffic through Windows allowing Linux applications to benefit from the same networking environment, security policies, and enterprise integrations available to Windows applications.
• Improved memory reclaim techniques to gradually and consistently release memory back to the Windows host when it’s not in use in the Linux VM

Since these changes touch mission critical paths like file system access and network, for now they are enabled just in WSL container and we are working towards enabling them in WSL by default in the future. There are also other fantastic Linux container CLI tools on Windows that build ontop of WSL like Docker Desktop, Podman Desktop and Rancher Desktop and these tools will also all benefit from these lower level platform changes so you can have a great selection of performant container tools on Windows that meet your needs.

Feedback and what’s next​

This feature is currently only in the pre-release version of WSL as a public preview. Please install it and try it out, and as always you can file your issues and feedback at our GitHub page! We aim to make this feature generally available in the upcoming fall of 2026. Thank you for all the great support, and happy coding!