# Workshop 0.9.7 release notes

## 15 September 2026

These release notes cover new features and changes in Workshop 0.9.7 and
SDKcraft 0.9.3.

## Requirements and compatibility

Workshop relies on Snap and LXD:

- See the [Tutorial](https://ubuntu.com/workshop/docs/tutorial/) for setup instructions.
- Refer to the [Contribution Guide](https://ubuntu.com/workshop/docs/contributing/) for development prerequisites.

## What’s new in 0.9.7

Workshop 0.9.7 introduces virtual machine support, so workshops can now run in
full VMs as well as containers. It adds a workshop confinement concept surfaced
through `workshop info`, freezes filesystems before taking snapshots for more
consistent backups, and makes workshop startup more reliable by replacing the
start shell script with an LXD event listener. CLI tables also render correctly
across ANSI and Unicode terminals.

### Workshop

**Repository:** [https://github.com/canonical/workshop](https://github.com/canonical/workshop)

- Introduced VM workshops. After running
  `snap set workshop workshop.experimental-vms=1`, add
  `confinement: virtual-machine` to the workshop definition file to create a
  VM-backed workshop. LXD must be installed from `latest/edge`.
- Introduced workshop confinement and exposed it in `workshop info`.
- Added support for freezing filesystems before taking snapshots for VMs.
- Replaced the start command shell script with an LXD event listener.
- Switched CLI tables to `ansiterm/tabwriter` with bold headings, fixing table
  rendering with ANSI colors and Unicode content.
- Fixed the storage pool resize hint shown in the degraded-mode error.
- Drop support for Ubuntu 20.04 workshops.

### SDKcraft 0.9.3 (unchanged)

**Repository:** [https://github.com/canonical/sdkcraft](https://github.com/canonical/sdkcraft)

- No changes in this release.

### Docs

**Repository:** [https://github.com/canonical/workshop](https://github.com/canonical/workshop)

- Reorganized the documentation home page by subject and added accessible
  structured table-of-contents support.
- Reworked the VS Code how-to around the Workshop extension, mapping the
  extension’s actions to their CLI equivalents and pinning the extension
  version.
- Consolidated AI agent skill references and resolved documentation link
  redirects.

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**Full Changelog**:

- Workshop: [https://github.com/canonical/workshop/compare/v0.9.6…v0.9.7](https://github.com/canonical/workshop/compare/v0.9.6...v0.9.7)