Honestly this usually happens when Docker suddenly updates itself in the background or the daemon gets bumped to a newer version while your local client or whatever library you use (TestContainers in this case) is still trying to talk with an older API version.

Docker doesn’t always keep the client-server API versions in perfect sync, so if the daemon jumps to something like 1.44 and your TestContainers setup is still locked on 1.32, it just refuses the call and you get that “client version too old” thing.

Most of the time it’s either:

• Docker Desktop auto-updated

• You pulled a new Docker engine version (especially on Linux)

• Or TestContainers is pinning an old API version and hasn’t refreshed its mapping yet

Fix is usually boring: update your Docker client or update TestContainers to the latest version so both sides speak the same API level.

Nothing magical! just version mismatch after an auto-update.