The latest tag in Docker is a commonly used tag that often, but not necessarily, points to the most recent version of an image. It is a default tag that can be applied to any image version, depending on how the image is tagged and managed.

The latest tag is not immutable. Each time an image is built and tagged as latest, it overwrites the previous image that had the latest tag. This means that the latest image can change frequently, depending on how often new versions are built and tagged.

Why latest Tag Might Not Point to the Latest Version

The latest tag might not be updated if developers do not consistently tag the latest version of their image as latest. For instance, they might push a new image with a specific version tag like 2.0 but forget to update the latest tag.