Microsoft denies WSL 3 exists, reveals Windows 11's WSL Containers ship next week
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No WSL 3, but WSL Containers are coming very soon
Microsoft has shot down the idea that WSL 3 is on the way. The articles that have been calling it WSL 3 mixed up a different feature, WSL Containers , which the company showed at Build 2026 and is now days away from shipping. The correction came straight from the team that builds Windows Subsystem for Linux .
TL; DR : WSL 3 does not exist. WSL Containers does, and it shows up in less than a week.
Microsoft has officially denied that WSL 3 exists.
Craig Loewen, the Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for the Windows Subsystem for Linux, posted on X to clear up: "As a PSA, there is no such thing as WSL 3! I’ve seen some articles talking about it, and it’s not currently a thing." Loewen was addressing a wave of articles that misidentified a different announcement.
The confusion started from Microsoft Build 2026, where the company announced WSL Containers, a new built-in feature that lets you create, run, and interact with Linux containers directly on Windows without third-party tools like Docker Desktop. Popular publications reported this as WSL 3, partly because the abbreviation WSLc was floating around.
According to Loewen, WSL Containers is not a versioned successor to WSL 2. It is a new capability built on top of the existing WSL infrastructure. He also confirmed it will be available in just a week or so from his post on June 23, 2026.
What is WSL, and what are WSL Containers
If you are not a developer, here’s a quick primer. WSL stands for Windows Subsystem for Linux, and it is a feature built into Windows that lets you run Linux environments directly inside Windows, without the need to dual-boot into a separate OS or set up a full VM.
However, a container is a lightweight, isolated environment that packages an application along with everything it needs to run, including dependencies, libraries, and configuration. Unlike a VM, a container does not simulate an entire operating system. It shares the host OS kernel but keeps its own file system and process space.
The advantage is that containers are faster to start, easier to share, and portable across machines. WSL Containers brings this container functionality directly into WSL itself.
It is not identical to a native Linux installation, though. Networking goes through a translation layer, and the kernel is Microsoft-managed, so there are subtle differences developers occasionally run into.
WSL Containers vs WSL 1 and WSL 2: what is different
WSL Containers is not a version number. It is a new layer of capability on top of WSL’s existing virtual machine infrastructure.
WSL 1 launched in August 2016 as a translation layer that converted Linux system calls into Windows ones. There wasn’t any real Linux kernel, so containers were a non-starter.
WSL 2 arrived in preview in May 2019 with a full Linux kernel running inside a lightweight managed VM, which made Docker Desktop possible.
WSL 1 (2016)<br>WSL 2 (2019)<br>WSL Containers (2026)
Primary purpose<br>Run Linux command-line tools on Windows<br>Run a full Linux OS inside Windows<br>Run isolated Linux containers natively on Windows
Engine<br>Translation layer, no real Linux kernel<br>Real Linux kernel in a lightweight Hyper-V VM<br>Dedicated Hyper-V engine built for OCI containers
Container support<br>No<br>Yes, but needs Docker Desktop<br>Yes, natively via wslc.exe
Control surface<br>Windows Command Prompt or Linux terminal<br>Linux terminal inside a distro...