Announcing .NET 11 Release Candidate 1

.NET 11 Release Candidate 1 is now available. This is our first release candidate, which comes with a go-live support license so you can confidently use this release for your production applications. This release of .NET 11 is supported in the new Visual Studio 2026 Insiders release alongside Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit. Check out the full release notes below and get started today.

This release contains the following highlights and improvements.

📚Libraries

• Signal processes and inspect termination status
• Experimental caller-driven TLS sessions
• DNS record resolution on Linux
• JSON support for new numeric types and binary schemas
• JSON closed-type polymorphism and union support
• Async options validation
• Construct BitArray values from spans
• Reuse compression encoders and decoders
• TLS channel binding on Unix
• Faster authenticated encryption on Apple platforms
• AES Key Wrap support
• Breaking changes
• Bug fixes
• Community contributors
• Full Release Notes

⏱️Runtime

• In-process crash reporting on Unix
• Half operations use FP16 hardware instructions
• Full Release Notes

🛠️ SDK

• dotnet test improves mobile application testing
• dotnet test adds run-level controls and result layouts
• Container publishing produces reproducible images and skips redundant uploads
• File-based programs add Native AOT reuse and formatting support
• dotnet format limits configuration discovery to included files
• Additional CLI improvements
• Full Release Notes

🧱 MSBuild

• Create and extract tar archives
• Expose item glob patterns to build tooling
• Full Release Notes

📦 NuGet

• Pack reuses existing project evaluations
• Vulnerable package updates work with warnings as errors
• Full Release Notes

C#

• C# 15 stabilizes unions and other language features
• Unsafe Evolution refinements
• Full Release Notes

F#

• Record spreads
• Record constructors
• Direct delegate construction
• Efficient interpolated strings
• Reflection-free record and union formatting
• Full Release Notes

🌐 ASP.NET Core

• SignalR authentication refresh APIs are finalized
• SignalR TypeScript client supports authentication refresh
• Blazor Server circuits update after authentication refresh
• OpenAPI reflects obsolete APIs
• Select an environment for build-time OpenAPI
• Negotiate authentication uses TLS channel binding
• Full Release Notes

📱 .NET MAUI

• Testing
• Controls
• Platform features
• XAML
• .NET for Android
• Apple platforms (.NET for iOS, Mac Catalyst, macOS, tvOS)
• Full Release Notes

🖥️ Windows Forms

• Manage kiosk-style experiences
• Modern visual styles stabilize for RC 1
• Full Release Notes

🚀 Get started

To get started with .NET 11, install the .NET 11 SDK.

If you’re on Windows, we recommend installing the latest version of Visual Studio 2026 Insiders.

You can also use Visual Studio Code and the C# Dev Kit extension with .NET 11.

📦 Join a .NET community standup

Join us each week and engage with the developers and product managers behind .NET for community standups.

Join us this Thursday at 11 AM Pacific time for .NET Unboxed for some amazing .NET 11 feature demos!

Announcing .NET 11 Release Candidate 1

📢 .NET 11 Discussions

The team has been making release announcements alongside full release notes on the dotnet/core GitHub Discussions.

🔔 Stay up-to-date with .NET 11

You can stay up-to-date with all the features of .NET 11 with:

• What’s new in .NET 11
• What’s new in C# 15
• What’s new in ASP.NET Core
• What’s new in Entity Framework Core
• Breaking Changes in .NET 11
• .NET 11 Releases