Docker in 2026: What's Changed and What's Still the Same

Docker turned ten years old and the container ecosystem around it has changed more in the past three years than in the preceding seven. If your container practices are from 2021, here’s what you’re missing.

BuildKit Is the Default (And You Should Use Its Advanced Features)

BuildKit has been the default builder since Docker 23. If you’re not using its cache mounts, secret mounting, and multi-platform build support, you’re leaving significant build performance and security improvements on the table. The difference between a naively written Dockerfile and a BuildKit-optimized one is often 5-10x in build time.

Distroless and Minimal Base Images

The practice of using full OS base images (ubuntu:latest, debian:bookworm) for production containers has largely been superseded. Distroless images, scratch-based images for compiled languages, and Alpine-based images where you need a shell result in dramatically smaller attack surfaces and faster pulls. A Go binary in a scratch container vs. the same binary in an Ubuntu container: 10MB vs. 80MB, with zero shell access for attackers.

Compose for Local Development, Not Just Testing

Docker Compose has become the standard way to run complex local development environments, and the modern Compose file format (v3+) has features most developers aren’t using: dependency health checks, profiles for different local setups, and the watch mode for live reloading without bind mounts.