Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where Podman Machine VMs on Mac using the libkrun provider could be regularly turned off by a port-scanning process on the host unintentionally commanding the VM to shut down.
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init command would fail on Windows hosts when using the hyperv provider when WSL was not installed (#29053).
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine init command would fail on Windows hosts when using the wsl provider when the user was a Hyper-V admin but Hyper-V is disabled (#29138).
• Fixed a bug where error messages from the OCI runtime were sometimes not displayed when --log-level=debug was passed to Podman.
• Fixed a bug where the podman machine os upgrade command did not function properly (#29085).
• Fixed a bug where the default image used by podman machine was not being properly cached (#29090).
• Fixed a bug where rootful Podman Machine VMs on Windows using the wsl provider would fail to start (#29003).
• Fixed a bug where commands that did not support the --replace option would incorrectly suggest using that option in error messages (#24537).
• Fixed a bug where the Pesto rootless port forwarding tool (enabled by rootless_port_forwarder=pasta) did not properly clean up rules on container restart and network reload, causing failures to forward traffic (#29032).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where Podman Machine VMs on Mac using the libkrun provider could be regularly turned off by a port-scanning process on the host unintentionally commanding the VM to shut down.

Security

• This release addresses CVE-2026-57231, where a malicious image using malformed Env entries could cause host environment variables to leak into containers run based on the image, including the ability to use the * glob operator to leak large numbers of environment variables without knowing their exact names (GHSA-4hq8-gpf5-8p68).
• The golang.org/x/crypto library has been updated to v0.53.0, addressing CVE-2026-39830 and CVE-2026-42508.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman save command would fail on Linux when using the -f oci-dir or -f docker-dir arguments.

Security

• This release addresses CVE-2026-57231, where a malicious image using malformed Env entries could cause host environment variables to leak into containers run based on the image, including the ability to use the * glob operator to leak large numbers of environment variables without knowing their exact names (GHSA-4hq8-gpf5-8p68).

Breaking Changes

• Due to breaking changes in this release, Podman v6.0.0 must be used with Buildah v1.44.0, Skopeo v1.23, Netavark and Aardvark v2.0.0, and configuration files from the container-libs repository's common/v0.68.0 release.
• Support for BoltDB databases has been dropped. Starting Podman 6 when the BoltDB database is in use will have Podman attempt an automatic migration from BoltDB to SQLite.
• Support for running on Intel Macs has been removed.
• Support for running on Windows 10 has been removed.
• Support for running on cgroups v1 systems has been removed. Please update your system to use cgroups v2.
• Support for running on iptables has been removed. Please use nftables instead.
• Support for CNI networking has been removed. Please use Netavark instead.
• Support for the slirp4netns rootless network stack has been removed. Please use Pasta instead. As part of this, the --network-cmd-path global option, only used with slirp4netns, has been removed.
• Podman's configuration file parsing logic has seen a major rewrite. Please see this document for exact details.
• Podman's import path has changed from github.com/containers/podman/v5 to go.podman.io/podman/v6 as part of our move into a CNCF-owned GitHub organization.
• Network isolation now defaults to enabled, improving Docker compatibility and security. A special workaround for the Docker-compatible API related to isolation being disabled has been removed (#27349).
• The way the podman quadlet suite of commands functions has been changed. Previously, Quadlets and their associated files were tracked using a .app file, ensuring that removing a Quadlet also removed all associated non-Quadlet files. Now, Quadlets and associated files are placed in subdirectories, which should reduce bugs and make manual management of Quadlets added by podman quadlet install much easier.
• VMs made by podman machine on Linux now mount volumes from the host using systemd. Volume mounts on existing podman machine VMs on Linux have been broken by this change, and the VM will need to be recreated.
• The podman volume prune command now matches Docker's behavior by only pruning unused anonymous volumes. Please use the newly-added --all option for the previous behavior (pruning all volumes).
• The podman volume list command now combines multiple filters using logical AND instead of logical OR (meaning all filters must match for a container to be included in output) (#26786).
• The label!= filter used in many commands now combines the output of multiple instances of the filter with logical AND instead of logical OR.
• The --format='{{json .Labels}} option to the podman ps, podman pod ps, and podman volume ls commands now prints its output as comma-separated key=value pairs instead of as a JSON map, improving Docker compatibility (#21847).
• The --all-providers option to podman machine list has been removed, as machines from all providers can now be accessed by all commands.
• The MemorySwappiness field of podman inspect is now set to nil when not explicitly set by the user (instead of -1), improving Docker compatibility (#23824).
• The podman commit command now pauses the container while committing changes, improving security by restricting concurrent modification. The prior behavior can be restored by using podman commit --pause=false ....
• The Go bindings for the REST API have removed the redundant nameOrID parameter from the artifacts.Remove() function.
• The minimum Go version required to build Podman is now v1.25.

Features

• All podman machine commands can now operate on VMs from all providers, regardless of what the current provider is set to. The provider set in the configuration only determines the provider used by newly-created VMs, and can be overridden by the new podman machine init --provider option. This should make operation of Mac and Windows installs mixing use of applehv and libkrun VMs, or hyperv and wsl VMs, much easier.
• A new command has been added, podman machine os update, which updates the operating system of a podman machine VM. Please note that this is not supported with the wsl provider.
• A new command has been added, podman system hyperv-prep, allowing Windows administrators to prepare a host for their users to run podman machine VMs using the hyperv provider.
• When starting a VM with podman machine start and podman machine init --now, if the connection to that VM is not the default, users will be prompted whether they want to change the default to the machine that was just started. This can also be controlled by a new option, --update-connection, which controls whether the default will be updated. If the --update-connection option is set, a user-interactive prompt is not displayed.
• The podman machine init and podman machine set commands now support a new option, --import-native-ca, which, when set, causes podman machine VMs on Windows, Linux, and Mac to import the host's trusted CA certificates each time the VM boots.
• The podman exec command now has a new option, --no-session, disabling API session tracking and database operations to increase performance (#26727).
• The podman image list --format json command now includes two new fields for each image, Repository and Tag (#27632).
• The manpages for Quadlets have been split into multiple files, one for each type of Quadlet file, and should be much more readable.
• Quadlet .volume units now support three new keys, UID= and GID= (to set the UID and GID that the volume will be created with) and Options= (to set generic volume options).
• Quadlet .container units now support mounting anonymous volumes (using a Mount= key with no source specified) (#28497).
• Two new search paths for Quadlets have been added, /usr/share/containers/systemd/users and /usr/share/containers/systemd/users/${UID}, to allow distributions to more easily package and distribute Quadlets (#27843).
• The podman quadlet list command now has a new alias, podman quadlet ls.
• The podman quadlet list command now has a new option, --noheading, which disables printing the table header. This is set automatically if the --format option is used.
• The pomdan quadlet list command now includes a new field in its output, Pod, which prints the pod a Quadlet .container unit is part of.
• The podman quadlet list command's --filter option now supports a new filter, status= (#28369).
• The --gpus option to podman create and podman run is now compatible with AMD GPUs.
• The podman create, podman run, and podman pod create commands can now specify volumes with a new option, nocreate (e.g. podman run --mount type=volume,src=myvol,dst=/mnt,nocreate) which will error if the specified volume does not exist, instead of creating it.
• The --log-opt option to the podman run and podman create now supports a new option, label=, to attach additional labels to logged messages (only usable with the journald log driver).
• Many Podman commands now expose a --tls-details option, allowing custom tuning of TLS settings using a containers-tls-details.yaml(5) file.
• The died event for Containers now exposes a new attribute, OOMKilled, which (if set) indicates the container was stopped due to running out of memory (#26701).
• Containers can now set multiple static IP addresses by passing the ip= option to --net multiple times (e.g. --net mynet:ip=10.0.0.2,ip=10.0.0.3,ip=10.0.0.4).
• The podman volume prune command now includes a new option, --all, to prune all unused volumes, not just anonymous volumes (#24597).
• The podman volume prune command now includes a new option, --dry-run, which returns the volumes that would be removed but does not actually remove them (#27838).
• The podman image scp command now includes a new option, --format, to set the archive format used for the image transfer (#28183).
• A new field has been added to containers.conf, default_host_ips, to set the default host IP that ports are forwarded from if an IP is not specified by the user (#27186).
• The podman image trust suite of commands now support a new --signature-policy option, which is mandatory for podman image trust set.
• Events now include artifact lifecycle events (create, pull, push, and remove) (#27260).
• A new experimental option for the `rootless_port_forw...

Breaking Changes

• Due to breaking changes in this release, Podman v6.0.0 must be used with Buildah v1.44.0, Skopeo v1.23, Netavark and Aardvark v2.0.0, and configuration files from the container-libs repository's common/v0.68.0 release.
• Support for BoltDB databases has been dropped. Starting Podman 6 when the BoltDB database is in use will have Podman attempt an automatic migration from SQLite to BoltDB.
• Support for running on Intel Macs has been removed.
• Support for running on Windows 10 has been removed.
• Support for running on cgroups v1 systems has been removed. Please update your system to use cgroups v2.
• Support for running on iptables has been removed. Please use nftables instead.
• Support for CNI networking has been removed. Please use Netavark instead.
• Support for the slirp4netns rootless network stack has been removed. Please use Pasta instead. As part of this, the --network-cmd-path global option, only used with slirp4netns, has been removed.
• Podman's configuration file parsing logic has seen a major rewrite. Please see this document for exact details.
• Podman's import path has changed from github.com/containers/podman/v5 to go.podman.io/podman/v6 as part of our move into a CNCF-owned GitHub organization.
• Network isolation now defaults to enabled, improving Docker compatibility and security. A special workaround for the Docker-compatible API related to isolation being disabled has been removed (#27349).
• The way the podman quadlet suite of commands functions has been changed. Previously, Quadlets and their associated files were tracked using a .app file, ensuring that removing a Quadlet also removed all associated non-Quadlet files. Now, Quadlets and associated files are placed in subdirectories, which should reduce bugs and make manual management of Quadlets added by podman quadlet install much easier.
• VMs made by podman machine on Linux now mount volumes from the host using systemd. Volume mounts on existing podman machine VMs on Linux have been broken by this change, and the VM will need to be recreated.
• The podman volume prune command now matches Docker's behavior by only pruning unused anonymous volumes. Please use the newly-added --all option for the previous behavior (pruning all volumes).
• The podman volume list command now combines multiple filters using logical AND instead of logical OR (meaning all filters must match for a container to be included in output) (#26786).
• The label!= filter used in many commands now combines the output of multiple instances of the filter with logical AND instead of logical OR.
• The --format='{{json .Labels}} option to the podman ps, podman pod ps, and podman volume ls commands now prints its output as comma-separated key=value pairs instead of as a JSON map, improving Docker compatibility (#21847).
• The --all-providers option to podman machine list has been removed, as machines from all providers can now be accessed by all commands.
• The MemorySwappiness field of podman inspect is now set to nil when not explicitly set by the user (instead of -1), improving Docker compatibility (#23824).
• The podman commit command now pauses the container while committing changes, improving security by restricting concurrent modification. The prior behavior can be restored by using podman commit --pause=false ....
• The Go bindings for the REST API have removed the redundant nameOrID parameter from the artifacts.Remove() function.
• The minimum Go version required to build Podman is now v1.25.

Features

• All podman machine commands can now operate on VMs from all providers, regardless of what the current provider is set to. The provider set in the configuration only determines the provider used by newly-created VMs, and can be overridden by the new podman machine init --provider option. This should make operation of Mac and Windows installs mixing use of applehv and libkrun VMs, or hyperv and wsl VMs, much easier.
• A new command has been added, podman machine os update, which updates the operating system of a podman machine VM. Please note that this is not supported with the wsl provider.
• A new command has been added, podman system hyperv-prep, allowing Windows administrators to prepare a host for their users to run podman machine VMs using the hyperv provider.
• When starting a VM with podman machine start and podman machine init --now, if the connection to that VM is not the default, users will be prompted whether they want to change the default to the machine that was just started. This can also be controlled by a new option, --update-connection, which controls whether the default will be updated. If the --update-connection option is set, a user-interactive prompt is not displayed.
• The podman machine init and podman machine set commands now support a new option, --import-native-ca, which, when set, causes podman machine VMs on Windows, Linux, and Mac to import the host's trusted CA certificates each time the VM boots.
• The podman exec command now has a new option, --no-session, disabling API session tracking and database operations to increase performance (#26727).
• The podman image list --format json command now includes two new fields for each image, Repository and Tag (#27632).
• The manpages for Quadlets have been split into multiple files, one for each type of Quadlet file, and should be much more readable.
• Quadlet .volume units now support three new keys, UID= and GID= (to set the UID and GID that the volume will be created with) and Options= (to set generic volume options).
• Quadlet .container units now support mounting anonymous volumes (using a Mount= key with no source specified) (#28497).
• Two new search paths for Quadlets have been added, /usr/share/containers/systemd/users and /usr/share/containers/systemd/users/${UID}, to allow distributions to more easily package and distribute Quadlets (#27843).
• The podman quadlet list command now has a new alias, podman quadlet ls.
• The podman quadlet list command now has a new option, --noheading, which disables printing the table header. This is set automatically if the --format option is used.
• The pomdan quadlet list command now includes a new field in its output, Pod, which prints the pod a Quadlet .container unit is part of.
• The podman quadlet list command's --filter option now supports a new filter, status= (#28369).
• The --gpus option to podman create and podman run is now compatible with AMD GPUs.
• The podman create, podman run, and podman pod create commands can now specify volumes with a new option, nocreate (e.g. podman run --mount type=volume,src=myvol,dst=/mnt,nocreate) which will error if the specified volume does not exist, instead of creating it.
• The --log-opt option to the podman run and podman create now supports a new option, label=, to attach additional labels to logged messages (only usable with the journald log driver).
• Many Podman commands now expose a --tls-details option, allowing custom tuning of TLS settings using a containers-tls-details.yaml(5) file.
• The died event for Containers now exposes a new attribute, OOMKilled, which (if set) indicates the container was stopped due to running out of memory (#26701).
• Containers can now set multiple static IP addresses by passing the ip= option to --net multiple times (e.g. --net mynet:ip=10.0.0.2,ip=10.0.0.3,ip=10.0.0.4).
• The podman volume prune command now includes a new option, --all, to prune all unused volumes, not just anonymous volumes (#24597).
• The podman volume prune command now includes a new option, --dry-run, which returns the volumes that would be removed but does not actually remove them (#27838).
• The podman image scp command now includes a new option, --format, to set the archive format used for the image transfer (#28183).
• A new field has been added to containers.conf, default_host_ips, to set the default host IP that ports are forwarded from if an IP is not specified by the user (#27186).
• The podman image trust suite of commands now support a new --signature-policy option, which is mandatory for podman image trust set.
• Events now include artifact lifecycle events (create, pull, push, and remove) (#27260).
• A new experimental option for the rootless_port_forwarder field in containers.conf has been added, rootless_port_forwarder="pasta". When set, rootless bridge networks will use Pasta's kernel-level port forwarding via Pesto instead of rootlessport, preserving the original client source IP in network traffic in rootless containers. The default remains rootlessport (the default for Podman 5.x), but we will investigate switching at a later date when stability is more certain.
• A new fil...

Security

• This release addresses CVE-2026-44517, where building a Dockerfile using a ADD or COPY instruction accessing a malicious Git repository or tar archive could cause files outside the build context directory to be included in the build context or copied into the build. Please see GHSA-49p4-px3h-rq49 for more details.

Misc

• Updated Buildah to v1.43.2
• Updated gvisor-tap-vsock to v0.8.9

Security

• This release addresses CVE-2026-33414, where the podman machine init --image command when run on Windows using the Hyper-V backend can run PowerShell-escaped commands from the user-specified image path on in a PowerShell session on the host (GHSA-hc8w-h2mf-hp59).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where containers with the unless-stopped restart policy would not restart after a reboot when podman-restart.service was enabled (#28152).
• Fixed a bug where setting Entrypoint="" in a Quadlet .container file did not clear the container's entrypoint (#28213).
• Fixed a bug where setting a HealthCmd in a Quadlet .container file to a command that included double-quotes (") would result in a nonfunctional healthcheck due to a parsing issue (#28409).
• Fixed a bug where FreeBSD systems could panic when inspecting containers created with the host network mode (#28289).

API

• Fixed a bug where the Libpod System Check endpoint could perform operations with bad data after returning a 400 error (#28350).
• Fixed a bug where the remote attach API for containers (Libpod & Compat) could panic due to a rare race condition (#28277).
• Fixed a bug where the Secret Create API could not create functional secrets using the shell driver due to options from the default driver being improperly added.

Misc

• Updated Buildah to v1.43.1
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.67.1
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.39.2

Bugfixes

• Fixed a critical bug where automatic migration from BoltDB to SQLite after a reboot could perform a partial migration, with some containers in SQLite and some remaining in BoltDB, when Quadlets were in use (#28215). For those who encountered this bug with 5.8.0 there is no way to automatically recover. If you do not have persistent containers/pods/volumes (i.e. all containers are run using Quadlets) then the easiest option is to move the db.sql file in Podman's storage directory to db.sql.bak (or similar) and reboot again with v5.8.1 to attempt another migration. Please contact the maintainers with any issues during migration and we will assist as able.

Features

• The podman quadlet install command can now install files which contain multiple separate Quadlet files. The files must be separated with a --- delimeter on a new line, and each section must begin with a # FileName=<name> line to name the new Quadlet (#27384).
• Quadlet .container files now support a new key, AppArmor, for configuring the container's AppArmor profile (#27095).
• When running the podman artifact add command against a podman machine VM, if the path being loaded or built is shared into the VM, Podman will load it from the VM's filesystem instead of streaming the data through the REST API, improving performance (#26321).
• The podman update command now features a new option, --ulimit, to update container ulimits (#26381).
• The podman exec command now features a new option, --no-session, which disables tracking of the exec session to improve performance and startup time (#26588).

Changes

• Podman will now automatically attempt to migrate legacy BoltDB databases to SQLite when the system reboots. This is necessary as support for BoltDB will be removed in Podman 6.0 in May. If automatic migration is not possible, a new option, podman system migrate --migrate-db, will manually force a migration.
• The podman secret create - command no longer requires that the secret be provided through a pipe, and instead allows typing the secret through the terminal (#27879).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where containers created by podman play kube with a healthcheck using the initialDelaySeconds option would run healthchecks before the initial delay had expired (#27678).
• Fixed a bug where healthchecks would sometimes fail to execute due to systemd rate limits.
• Fixed a bug where the podman export command would emit a Mount event instead of an Export event.
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command incorrectly handled precedence between environment variables set by both the envFrom and env fields (#27287).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would panic when parsing Pod YAML missing the image field (#27784).
• Fixed a bug where the podman volume mount command returned empty paths when volumes were handled by a plugin driver (#27858).
• Fixed a bug where containers created with --rootfs instead of from an image would show that they had a healthcheck in the starting state even if no healthcheck was defined (#27651).
• Fixed a bug where the podman build command's --pull=newer option did not function correctly (#22845).
• Fixed a bug where the RequiresMountsFor field in Quadlet .container files incorrectly handled bind-mount paths which contained spaces.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman run --detach-keys option did not accept an empty string (IE, no detach keys) (#27414).
• Fixed a bug where the remove Podman client's podman build --secret ... env=VAR option would incorrectly try to read the environment variable on the server side, instead of from the client (#27494).
• Fixed a bug where the podman artifact push and podman artifact pull commands ignored authentication credentials given by the --authfile option (#27421).
• Fixed a bug where Windows paths were incorrectly handled under some circumstances when using the HyperV machine provider (#27571).
• Fixed a bug where the podman run --pod-id-file option was not properly validated, allowing the creation of containers in pods with improper user namespace configuration (#26848).

API

• Added new APIs for interacting with Quadlets, including GET /libpod/quadlets/{name}/file (print contents of a Quadlet file), GET /libpod/quadlets/{name}/exists (check if the given Quadlet exists), POST /libpod/quadlets (install one or more Quadlets), DELETE /libpod/quadlets (remove one or more Quadlets), and DELETE /libpod/quadlets/{name} (remove a single Quadlet).
• Fixed a bug where the Compat and Libpod Logs endpoints for Containers did not use nanosecond-level precision for reported timestamps (#27961).
• Fixed a bug where the Compat Create endpoint for Containers incorrectly handled healthcheck commands with arguments containing spaces (#26519).
• Fixed a bug where the Compat Remove endpoint for Secrets was misnamed as DELETE /secret/{name} instead of DELETE /secrets/{name} (#27548).

Misc

• Updated Buildah to v1.43.0
• Updated the containers/storage library v1.62.0
• Updated the containers/image library to v5.39.1
• Updated the containers/common library to v0.67.0

Features

• The podman quadlet install command can now install files which contain multiple separate Quadlet files. The files must be separated with a --- delimeter on a new line, and each section must begin with a # FileName=<name> line to name the new Quadlet (#27384).
• Quadlet .container files now support a new key, AppArmor, for configuring the container's AppArmor profile (#27095).
• When running the podman artifact add command against a podman machine VM, if the path being loaded or built is shared into the VM, Podman will load it from the VM's filesystem instead of streaming the data through the REST API, improving performance (#26321).
• The podman update command now features a new option, --ulimit, to update container ulimits (#26381).
• The podman exec command now features a new option, --no-session, which disables tracking of the exec session to improve performance and startup time (#26588).

Changes

• The podman secret create - command no longer requires that the secret be provided through a pipe, and instead allows typing the secret through the terminal (#27879).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where containers created by podman play kube with a healthcheck using the initialDelaySeconds option would run healthchecks before the initial delay had expired (#27678).
• Fixed a bug where healthchecks would sometimes fail to execute due to systemd rate limits.
• Fixed a bug where the podman export command would emit a Mount event instead of an Export event.
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command incorrectly handled precedence between environment variables set by both the envFrom and env fields (#27287).
• Fixed a bug where the podman kube play command would panic when parsing Pod YAML missing the image field (#27784).
• Fixed a bug where the podman volume mount command returned empty paths when volumes were handled by a plugin driver (#27858).
• Fixed a bug where containers created with --rootfs instead of from an image would show that they had a healthcheck in the starting state even if no healthcheck was defined (#27651).
• Fixed a bug where the podman build command's --pull=newer option did not function correctly (#22845).
• Fixed a bug where the RequiresMountsFor field in Quadlet .container files incorrectly handled bind-mount paths which contained spaces.
• Fixed a bug where the remote Podman client's podman run --detach-keys option did not accept an empty string (IE, no detach keys) (#27414).
• Fixed a bug where the remove Podman client's podman build --secret ... env=VAR option would incorrectly try to read the environment variable on the server side, instead of from the client (#27494).
• Fixed a bug where the podman artifact push and podman artifact pull commands ignored authentication credentials given by the --authfile option (#27421).
• Fixed a bug where Windows paths were incorrectly handled under some circumstances when using the HyperV machine provider (#27571).
• Fixed a bug where the podman run --pod-id-file option was not properly validated, allowing the creation of containers in pods with improper user namespace configuration (#26848).

API

• Added new APIs for interacting with Quadlets, including GET /libpod/quadlets/{name}/file (print contents of a Quadlet file), GET /libpod/quadlets/{name}/exists (check if the given Quadlet exists), POST /libpod/quadlets (install one or more Quadlets), DELETE /libpod/quadlets (remove one or more Quadlets), and DELETE /libpod/quadlets/{name} (remove a single Quadlet).
• Fixed a bug where the Compat and Libpod Logs endpoints for Containers did not use nanosecond-level precision for reported timestamps (#27961).
• Fixed a bug where the Compat Create endpoint for Containers incorrectly handled healthcheck commands with arguments containing spaces (#26519).
• Fixed a bug where the Compat Remove endpoint for Secrets was misnamed as DELETE /secret/{name} instead of DELETE /secrets/{name} (#27548).