The Short Answer
You can't really play 3DS games on a Switch natively. Nintendo never brought 3DS backwards compatibility to the Switch, and there's no official service for it. The reality is a bit messier than that though, so here's how things actually work in practice. The 3DS uses a completely different architecture — ARM11 processors with a custom GPU called PICA200-based hardware, which is nothing like the Switch's NVIDIA Tegra X1. The hardware gap alone makes native emulation impractical even in theory. The Switch could theoretically handle some of the load, but the instruction set translation overhead and the dual-screen, stereoscopic 3D output would be enormous challenges. Nobody has cracked that properly on a console that boots to a signed environment like the Switch does. It is possible under very specific and limited conditions, and most of those conditions involve running custom firmware on the Switch and using an unofficial emulator. The Citra emulator was the most well-known project for this, and it ran on PC and Android primarily. There were attempts to port it to Switch via homebrew, but they were extremely experimental, rarely stable, and covered a tiny fraction of the 3DS library. As of March 2024, the Citra project was officially discontinued. That means no new builds, no bug fixes, and no official continued development. The codebase is still available on GitHub for anyone who wants to fork it, but that's where things stand.
If you do find someone claiming they got a working 3DS game running on their Switch through homebrew, it's likely a custom build of something like Citra or a similar emulator project, running under custom firmware. These runs are typically hit or miss. Some simpler games might work at low resolutions and reduced speeds. Most anything beyond that is a gamble. My own experience with this kind of thing on homebrew Switch setups was frustrating enough that I stopped bothering. I had one attempt with a custom Citra build on a switched running custom firmware, trying to run a couple of lighter titles. Frame rates were inconsistent at best. Some games would boot and then crash within minutes. Audio would desync. Touch controls didn't map properly to the Joy-Cons without significant configuration work that often broke mid-session. The whole thing felt like assembling furniture with half the screws missing.
What Actually Works if You Want 3DS Games on a Portable
The honest answer is to just buy a 3DS or 2DS. They're cheap now, refurbished units go for fifty bucks or less, and they run every 3DS game natively with zero compatibility issues. That's the path of least resistance and the one that actually works reliably. If you want to play them on a Switch specifically because you want a single device, that's a different conversation, but it doesn't really solve anything. Some 3DS games have been ported to the Switch — Pokemon Sun and Moon, for instance, or Mario Kart 7 in spirit if you count Tour. But those are individual ports, not emulation. You're paying full price for a Switch version of a game that originally cost less on 3DS. The library coverage is maybe five percent of what was released on the 3DS. Most of the catalog simply has not been ported.
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Legal and Practical Considerations
Running homebrew on your Switch voids your warranty and carries a ban risk from Nintendo if you go online. That's not theoretical — people get banned regularly for this. Even if you stay offline, the experience you'd get from emulation on Switch hardware is nowhere near what a real 3DS delivers. The performance ceiling is just too low for most titles, and the discontinuation of Citra means the tooling behind it is no longer being maintained. So no, playing 3DS games on a Switch isn't really a thing that works in any practical sense. The hardware doesn't support it natively, the emulation projects behind it have been shut down, and the homebrew routes that exist are fragile and risky. A used 3DS is the move if you actually want to play these games.
