Get ready –the first Insiders release of Visual Studio 2026 has arrived! In this new evolution of Visual Studio, we’re continuing our commitment to building the best integrated developer environment for C++ developers on Windows.
Visual Studio 2026 features a fresh UI, faster performance, and improved developer productivity with advanced AI integration.
For more details on what’s new, check out the official announcement on the Visual Studio Blog!
We would love your feedback – try out our Insiders release of Visual Studio 2026 today! If you run into any issues, you can report them to Visual Studio Developer Community from the IDE by navigating to Help > Send Feedback > Report a Problem.
Oh, and what happened to the DataTips the font has shrunk so much you would need a magnifying glass to read them
Thank you for the feedback; I recommend filing a bug from Help > Send Feedback > Report a Problem in the IDE.
Since Visual Studio 2022 came in the Project Upgrade process seems to have been broken or at least not follow any standard UI guidelines, and I am reminded of it with the 2026 Insiders version of Visual Studio.
Visual Studio on opening a solution might find that there is a newer platform toolset available for C++ and so it shows you a list of all the projects that would be upgrade.
The two drop down options are 1 - the new platform toolset, and 2 - No Upgrade.
You can either choose one of those two and press the OK button, or...
Thank you for the feedback! We are shipping a new upgrade experience that will be available in a future preview before VS 18.0 reaches the Stable Channel.
The new Visual Studio seems to have totally removed the Solution based Project dependencies.
All previous versions of Visual Studio have for C++ projects "Build Dependencies\Project Dependencies". Whilst I actually prefer in-project based build dependencies they don't work with Azure DevOps when you have multiple solutions to build your product, if you use an in-project based dependency then at the beginning of the build, DevOps cleans the project and removes the build output which means if in Visual Studio 2026 I need to make 1 C++ project dependent on another then I can only do that if both projects are...
Update: our team is looking into this now.
Ah, I think the Developer Community ticket I linked earlier was filed internally by someone else at Microsoft so I can’t make it visible. No further action needed, we will work on addressing this issue.
Attempting to visit that page I get:
“We were unable to get this feedback item. It could be because you don’t have access to it or it doesn’t exist
Error details: [“Request failed with status code 403″]”
Thanks for trying out VS 2026! I am not sure; I am following up with some folks who would know more and will get back to you.
I presume 2015 ABI is to have a universal, single installation for runtimes from 2015 to 2026. All of these are built upon the Universal C Runtime, which shipped in Windows 10 and was an update bundled in the redists until 14.50 for older operating systems.
For me it will require only changing the OS version check from Windows 7 SP1 to Windows 10 minumum.
I have installed the insiders build and I am pleasantly surprised how the installation and the first minutes went well.
Getting the extensions from Visual Studio 2022 was a definitive plus: I was ready to use VS 2026 immediately. The new settings UI is also nice and tidy. I am looking forward to the final product.
I have a few questions:
* Do you have an ETA regarding a Cmake version with a Visual Studio 2026 generator?
* Alternatively, is there a way to change the toolset on the entire set of project in the solution?
* Can the Insiders version...
The Visual Studio 2026 generator is targeted for the next Insiders release. This is what we would have previously called "Preview 2". Note that this is different from the update from yesterday, which was a hotfix. I can't give a precise date, but it should be very soon, and certainly before 18.0 reaches the Stable Channel. There will be an upgrade experience shipping around then as well to help users move all projects to the new Build Tools version. We don't have a broader experience for changing the version across the board at any time though. In general, there are...
Beautiful UI!
Can I use it for production projects?
This is an Insiders release of Visual Studio (which we formerly called “Previews”). We do not recommend using it in a production environment, and we especially do not recommend using MSVC v14.50 in a production environment while it is an Insiders build. We would love your feedback to identify bugs so we can validate the quality of both products as we transition to a stable release in the near future. Once the IDE and build tools reach the Stable Channel, we would then recommend using them in production.
Got it, Thanks
The thing I want most out of “deep AI integration in the development experience” is a clear way to turn it off – and that’s not even because I don’t want to use it. I DO want to use it, but I want to have control over how I’m using it and feel confident that it will stay out of my way if I ask it to. Can you give any reassurance that the AI isn’t going to be so deeply integrated that it’s impossible to just get a human-powered IDE when you want it?
We definitely want you to have a highly customizable experience in Visual Studio, which is why we continue to provide a wide variety of settings in the Options menu to give you the control you need. If you feel that you are not able to configure or turn something off to your liking, please let us know via the Help > Send Feedback experience in the IDE.
*Best on Windows 11 with 64 GB RAM and 16 CPU cores
Microsoft wants to bury and eliminate Visual Studio and focus solely on Visual Studio Code.
Here’s the setup you need to install it.
I was able to compile UE4 with VS 2015 and a surface pro 3 8GB version :V
Yes, to clarify, the system requirements are listed at the link Michael provided in the other comment. It’s never a bad idea to have a more powerful system to get more out of your development experience though. In addition, VS 2026 will feature some performance improvements. They will be described in more detail in future blog posts. We also have more updates to Visual Studio 2026 Insiders on the way which will contain further optimizations.
Where do you see it requires Win11, 64 GB memory and a 16 core CPU?
The system requirements as provided [here](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/vs18/vs-system-requirements) are no different than VS 2022. In fact it looks like an exact copy, althoug there may be some differences. Or are you just trying to make a statement about MS?
VS 2026 currently lists Win10 and Win11 as supported, which is odd and unlikely to be true when it finally releases given EOL for Win10. 16 GB memory is pretty standard and most dev machines, in my experience, have at least 32 GB. Of course if you're running containers...
VS2019 supported Windows 7 despite it being close to EOL.