Python on Windows on Arm: Ecosystem Enablement Update
2026-07-17 , Conference Hall Complex (S4)

Running Python natively on Windows on Arm requires more than a working interpreter. To have a nice developer experience, it depends on compilers, packaging, binary wheels, CI infrastructure, and support from the wider library ecosystem.

This talk provides a status update of the Python ecosystem on Windows on Arm in 2026, based on ongoing collaboration between Microsoft, Arm, and the open-source community. We will cover CPython support, packaging, wheels, tooling, and CI availability, with a focus on what developers can realistically use today.

Using widely adopted libraries such as PyTorch as examples, we will show how native Arm support is being enabled across the ecosystem, what remaining challenges projects face when supporting Windows on Arm.

The talk will also cover the developer and CI story enabled by native Arm runners and Windows 11 Arm images on GitHub Actions, and how this infrastructure lowers the barrier for projects to add and maintain Windows on Arm support.

The goal is to give a snapshot of the current state, highlight the remaining gaps, and explain how contributors and maintainers can participate to the ongoing effort.


Expected audience expertise: Beginner

Diego Russo is a CPython core developer and Principal Software Engineer in Arm’s Runtimes team, based in Cambridge, UK. He has been using Python since 2006 and contributing to CPython since 2023, with a focus on interpreter performance, JIT-related work, CI infrastructure, and ensuring CPython and its ecosystem run reliably and efficiently on Arm platforms. His work sits at the intersection of runtime, performance engineering, and large-scale open source collaboration.
Diego is also a EuroPython organiser and leads the Arm Python Guild, an internal community of more than 1,400 Python developers working across the company.

This speaker also appears in:

Software Engineer at Microsoft. I work on the Python environment for Windows on Arm, PowerToys, Windows developer tools, and the Windows Shell. PWA expert.