diff --git a/cmd/virtwork/main.go b/cmd/virtwork/main.go
index 3bdcb48..df3146b 100644
--- a/cmd/virtwork/main.go
+++ b/cmd/virtwork/main.go
@@ -446,7 +446,7 @@ func runE(cmd *cobra.Command, args []string) error {
 		}
 		w, err := registry.Get(name, wlCfg, registryOpts...)
 		if err != nil {
-			continue
+			return fmt.Errorf("creating workload %q for service check: %w", name, err)
 		}
 		if w.RequiresService() {
 			svc := w.ServiceSpec()
diff --git a/cmd/virtwork/main_test.go b/cmd/virtwork/main_test.go
index 6216e1f..dba2ccd 100644
--- a/cmd/virtwork/main_test.go
+++ b/cmd/virtwork/main_test.go
@@ -822,6 +822,25 @@ var _ = Describe("CLI end-to-end scenarios", func() {
 	})
 })
 
+var _ = Describe("Service creation loop error handling", func() {
+	It("should return error from registry for unknown workload", func() {
+		registry := workloads.DefaultRegistry()
+		cfg := config.WorkloadConfig{
+			Enabled:  config.BoolPtr(true),
+			VMCount:  1,
+			CPUCores: constants.DefaultCPUCores,
+			Memory:   constants.DefaultMemory,
+		}
+
+		_, err := registry.Get("nonexistent-workload", cfg,
+			workloads.WithNamespace(constants.DefaultNamespace),
+			workloads.WithSSHCredentials(constants.DefaultSSHUser, "", nil),
+		)
+		Expect(err).To(HaveOccurred())
+		Expect(err.Error()).To(ContainSubstring("nonexistent-workload"))
+	})
+})
+
 var _ = Describe("DataVolume namespacing for multi-VM deployments", func() {
 	// nolint: dupl
 	Context("when deploying multiple VMs of disk workload", func() {