Multi-Architecture Container Images: Buildx, Manifest Lists, and Registry Patterns

Calendar February 21, 2026
Cicd
Intermediate
Multi-Arch-Builds, Container-Image-Management
Docker, Buildx, Multi-Arch, Arm64, Containers, Manifest
Docker, Docker-Buildx, Container-Registries

Multi-Architecture Container Images#

You can no longer assume containers run only on x86. AWS Graviton instances are ARM64. Developer laptops with Apple Silicon are ARM64. Ampere cloud instances are ARM64. A container image tagged myapp:latest needs to work on both architectures, or you end up maintaining separate tags and hoping nobody pulls the wrong one.

Manifest Lists#

A manifest list (also called an OCI image index) lets a single tag point to multiple architecture-specific images. When a client pulls myapp:latest, the registry returns the image matching the client’s architecture.