Microsoft announced on September 29, 2026, that WSL Containers had reached general availability. The feature brings a command-line tool and an API for Linux containers to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), along with container management, networking and monitoring capabilities.
What the CLI and API do
A container packages an application and its dependencies into an environment where it can run. WSL Containers’ command-line tool, wslc.exe, builds, runs and manages Linux containers; container.exe is a built-in alias for the same commands.
The GA feature set includes restarting containers, copying files, connecting and disconnecting networks, streaming events, running health checks, mounting storage and configuring stop timeouts. Storage is configurable, too.
The API lets Windows applications pull, run and interact with Linux containers programmatically. Its NuGet package is Microsoft.WSL.Containers; the documented language projections include C#, C++ and C, with the C++/WinRT projection marked as preview.
Compose is still in development
Microsoft said it had started work toward wsl compose up compatibility with existing compose.yaml files. Compose was not among the capabilities announced at general availability, and Microsoft gave no release date for it.
That boundary matters if your development workflow depends on Compose files. WSL Containers already covers a range of individual-container tasks, but the planned Compose support is a separate step.
A reported Nginx run illustrates a local workflow
In one reported hands-on example, an Nginx container ran in Debian 13 (Trixie) under WSL 3.0.1. The setup mapped container port 80 to Windows port 8080, where the server was reached at localhost:8080.
Requirements, performance and integrations
Microsoft says WSL Containers requires WSL version 2.9.3 or later. To get the feature, run wsl --update or download the latest WSL release.
Microsoft also says WSL Containers can deliver up to 2× faster access to Windows files from Linux environments. That figure applies to Windows-file access, not to every container workload.
For managed environments, Microsoft Intune can control access to WSL Containers and restrict image pulls through registry allow lists. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can surface container process, file and network activity and associate it with the Windows host. Microsoft also lists support for WSL Containers in Visual Studio Code’s Dev Containers workflow and Containers extension, and says Aspire can use it as a container runtime.
