Will Windows 7 work on an M1 Mac with Parallels 16.5?

I got excited when I saw the news about 16.5 compatibility with M1 Macs, and I very nearly ordered myself a new MacBook Pro on the strength of that news.
But then I saw an article that said that you need a special version of Windows to run on M1...
The reason I use Parallels is because of one particular program that will not work under Windows 10, so am I correct in thinking that I need to put that MacBook Pro order on hold?

 

No. Windows 7 will not work with Parallels 16.5 for M1 Mac

 

Thanks Mmika.
Do we know whether Parallels will be working on a version that will allow any Guest OS to work on M1, like they do on Intel machines?

 

It's technically impossible to run virtual machines of an Intel guest on an ARM host. I'm sure Parallels will work on the compatibility with more ARM operating systems, but an Intel OS is unlikely. They could only run via emulation. Parallels has never done emulation before and even if they did, the performance would be much worse than running a virtual machine.

 

Oh, right. Thanks for that Michael.
Big decisions to be made in the future then... changing back to running a PC, or giving up the program that I use... Either way, I will not be requiring Parallels.

 

The compatibility options and x86 emulation in Windows 10 on ARM work surprisingly well. You might get your Windows 7 program to work.
Or you could try QEMU. I think that program can emulate Intel Windows. I don't know how well it works and the performance of an emulated Windows won't be great, but it might be worth a try. Or maybe Crossover if you only want to run one program and don't need Windows for anything else.