Canonical released Multipass 1.17 on October 19, 2026, adding built-in support for Debian and Fedora images alongside Ubuntu, plus new virtualization drivers for Windows and macOS.
Multipass launches Linux virtual machines with a single command on Windows, macOS and Linux. Until now it centered on Ubuntu instances.
Debian and Fedora join Ubuntu
The new distribution support builds on the custom image support added in Multipass 1.16. “We are opening the door for other distributions such that users can benefit from these as new playgrounds,” Canonical wrote in the GitHub release notes, adding that it wants user feedback on whether to go further.
The release also adds availability zones for simulating a cloud setup on one machine. In the Ubuntu Discourse announcement, Canonical said VMs can be placed in one of three predefined zones with multipass launch --zone, each with its own isolated subnet. Disabling a zone with multipass disable-zones marks its instances unavailable, so developers can see how an application behaves when part of its infrastructure goes down. Existing instances move into zone 1 on upgrade.
New drivers on Windows and macOS
On Windows, a driver built on the Host Compute System (HCS) APIs is now the default, replacing the earlier Hyper-V-based integration. Its main benefit, according to Canonical, is that it works on every Windows edition, including Windows Home. The Hyper-V and VirtualBox drivers on Windows are being deprecated; Hyper-V VMs get a migration path, while VirtualBox instances don’t get an automatic one.
Mac users get a preview driver based on Apple’s Virtualization framework, with faster startup and native ASIF disk image support on macOS 26. QEMU stays the macOS default for now, and VirtualBox is still supported on Intel Macs. Canonical plans to make the Apple driver the default once it supports all Multipass features.
Multipass also now builds and runs on IBM POWER (ppc64el) and IBM Z (s390x) systems, with official snaps for both. The GUI has a redesigned image catalog grouped by operating system and defaults to the latest Ubuntu LTS, which Phoronix identified as Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
Version 1.17 finishes the deprecation cycle announced in 1.16, removing the LXD and libvirt drivers along with blueprints and appliances. Full details are in the Multipass 1.17.0 release notes, and a 1.17.1 milestone is already open on the project’s GitHub.