Today, we are excited to announce the sixth preview release of .NET 11! This release includes improvements across the .NET Runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI, C#, Entity Framework Core, F#, and container images. Check out the linked release notes below and get started today.
This release contains the following improvements.
📚Libraries
- Stream adapters for memory and text
- Asynchronous validation with DataAnnotations
- System.Text.Json serializes C# union types
- Configure Activity tracing with rules
- Cross-lane operations for vectors
- Start processes suspended and look them up by id
- See all library updates
⏱️Runtime
- Runtime-async performance improvements
- JIT improvements
- In-process crash report logging
- NativeAOT: faster interface dispatch
- SIMD: Lane construction and composition APIs
- See all runtime updates
🛠️ SDK
- NativeAOT CLI serves the full command surface
dotnet testgains new options and improved output- Test templates support xUnit v3 and NUnit on Microsoft.Testing.Platform
- File-based apps support
#:include .dllreferences - Container publishing supports multi-arch builds with Podman
- TypeScript outputs integrate with Static Web Assets
- CLI honors MSBuild server and standard OpenTelemetry env vars
- See all SDK updates
C#
🌐 ASP.NET Core
- Async validation for minimal APIs
- Automatic cross-origin (CSRF) protection
- Blazor Virtualize can scroll to an item
- OpenAPI 3.2 by default
- Unions in ASP.NET Core
- Short-circuit endpoints with an attribute
- SignalR authentication refresh
- Cancel hub invocations from the client
- dotnet user-jwts supports file-based apps
- See all ASP.NET Core updates
📱 .NET MAUI
- CollectionView2 comes to Windows
- Handler-based Shell architecture on Android
- Microsoft.Maui.Controls.Compatibility package removed
- HybridWebView is now AOT-safe
- Geolocation gains a minimum-distance filter
- Android MediaPicker result recovery
- .NET for Android
- Apple platforms (.NET for iOS, Mac Catalyst, macOS, tvOS)
- See all .NET MAUI updates
🎁 Entity Framework Core
- LINQ query translation improvements
- Keys and indexes traverse complex-type properties
- Unconstrained foreign key relationships
- Azure Cosmos DB provider improvements
- Migrations improvements
- Microsoft.Data.Sqlite now depends on SQLite3MC.PCLRaw.bundle
- See all EF Core updates
F#
- Array.init can inline initialization lambdas
- Interpolated strings parse next to equals signs
- FSI –quiet keeps restore output off stdout
- Signature-file diagnostics catch missing semantic attributes
- Debug sequence points cover more F# expressions
- See all F# updates
📦 Container Images
🚀 Get started
To get started with .NET 11, install the .NET 11 SDK.
If you’re on Windows using Visual Studio, we recommend installing the latest Visual Studio 2026 Insiders. You can also use Visual Studio Code and the C# Dev Kit extension with .NET 11.
While the .NET 11 preview looks great, I have to ask about language feature prioritization.
C# Feature introduce left and right join clauses to C# query expression syntax (adding "left join" to LINQ) has been one of the highest-voted community requests for years. The team already agreed to it (We will proceed with this proposal). Yet, it sits in "nimbus" with zero progress while niche compiler features continue to be prioritized and shipped.
Could we get a clear explanation of how language features are prioritized? Why are niche additions like extension indexers taking precedence over an agreed-upon, highly-voted improvement...
Hyperlinks don’t work.
Hyperlinks work, thanks 🙂