Visual Studio Blog
The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team
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Visual Studio 2026 is here: faster, smarter, and a hit with early adopters
Dear developers, We’re thrilled to announce that Visual Studio 2026 is now generally available! This is a moment we’ve built side by side with you. Your feed...
Latest posts
Bookmark Studio: evolving bookmarks in Visual Studio
Bookmarks in Visual Studio have always been a simple, reliable feature. Many developers use them regularly, and over the years we’ve heard consistent feedback from those users. Bookmarks were useful, but there were a few core gaps that kept them from being as effective and relevant as they could be. Navigation was one of the biggest pain points. You could move between bookmarks, but there was no easy way to jump directly to a specific bookmark using the keyboard. That made bookmarks harder to rely on once you had more than a few. Another common request was sharing. Bookmarks worked well for personal, local nav...
Visual Studio March Update – Build Your Own Custom Agents
This month's Visual Studio update gives you new ways to customize GitHub Copilot. Custom agents allow you to build specialized Copilot agents tailored to your team's workflow, backed by the tools and knowledge sources that matter to your project. Alongside that, agent skills bring reusable instruction sets, and a new find_symbol tool gives agents language-aware navigation across your codebase. Beyond agents, we're continuing to invest in the diagnostics experience with Copilot-powered profiling directly from Test Explorer and real-time perf tips during debugging. Security gets a boost too, with Copilot now hel...
Unlock More Power in Your Development Workflow: Syncfusion for Visual Studio Subscribers
A few months ago, I was talking with a developer who said something that stuck with me: “I love building apps. I just don’t love rebuilding the same UI controls over and over again.” That’s the reality for a lot of teams. You want to focus on your business logic, your architecture, your differentiation. Instead, you burn cycles wiring up grids, charts, document exports, dashboards, and signing workflows. If you’re a Visual Studio subscriber, there’s a benefit waiting for you that can change that: Syncfusion. And it’s included at no additional cost for eligible subscribers. Let me walk you thro...
Get the Inside Scoop on Visual Studio Subscriptions, Straight to Your Inbox
Get the Inside Scoop on Visual Studio Subscriptions, Straight to Your Inbox A few weeks ago I was talking with a Visual Studio Enterprise subscriber. Seasoned .NET developer. Ships production code. Knows his stack inside and out. During the conversation I mentioned one of the training benefits included in his subscription. He stopped me. “I didn’t even know that was included.” That is exactly why we created the Visual Studio Subscriptions monthly email newsletter. Why We Launched It Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise subscriptions include far more than just the IDE. For exam...
Visual Studio Dev Essentials: Free, Practical Tools for Every Developer
When I first found Visual Studio Dev Essentials, it felt like discovering a hidden door in the developer toolkit world. I’d heard about free tools and cloud credits, but I wasn’t sure if it would really matter in day-to-day coding life. The short answer: it absolutely does. What struck me most was how the program was built with real developers in mind, and the fact that it’s completely free makes it accessible to anyone with a Microsoft account. Why Dev Essentials Matters Dev Essentials is not a trial version or a limited sneak-peek. It’s a free developer membership that brings together the tools, clou...
Visual Studio February Update
This month’s Visual Studio update continues our focus on helping you move faster and stay in flow, with practical improvements across AI assistance, debugging, testing, and modernization. Building on the momentum from January’s editor updates, the February release brings smarter diagnostics and targeted support for real world development scenarios, from WinForms maintenance to C++ modernization. All of the features highlighted are available in the Visual Studio 2026 Stable Channel as part of the February 2026 feature update (18.3). Please update to the latest version to try out these new features! WinForms Ex...
Custom Agents in Visual Studio: Built in and Build-Your-Own agents
Agents in Visual Studio now go beyond a single general-purpose assistant. We're shipping a set of curated preset agents that tap into deep IDE capabilities; debugging, profiling, testing alongside a framework for building your own custom agents tailored to how your team works. Built in agents Each preset agent is designed around a specific developer workflow and integrates with Visual Studio's native tooling in ways that a generic assistant can't. Access them through the agent picker in the chat panel or using ‘@’ in chat. Bring your own: custom agents (preview) The presets cover workflow...
Unlock language-specific rich symbol context using new find_symbol tool
Refactoring at scale is a time-consuming and error-prone process for developers. In large codebases, developers have relied on manual searches and incremental edits across multiple files to accomplish these tasks. Modern development workflows depend on fast and accurate code navigation to avoid these pitfalls. When developers refactor existing code, explore unfamiliar areas of a large codebase, or make targeted changes, they naturally rely on IDE language service features such as Find All References, Go to Definition, and Go to Implementation to understand how code is structured and connected. Agent mode no...
Roadmap for AI in Visual Studio (February)
After a busy January (catch up here), we're shifting focus to reliability and refinement. This month is about tightening core workflows, improving agent stability, and building on the MCP foundations we've been laying. Agent Mode & Coding Agents Reliability is the priority this month. We're raising the floor on agent-driven scenarios with: Planning Agent First steps toward a dedicated agent for multi-step task planning and execution. Copilot SDK & Platform Integration (Experimental) We’re also beginning early work to better integrate the Copilot CLI into Vis...