Microsoft have just released Visual Studio 2026 Insider. This is the first release of their flagship programming IDE and is safe to install side by side with existing installs, so should be safe to try out today. Although called an “Insiders” release, you don’t need to do anything special to get started, simply download and install.
Highlight new features of Visual Studio 2026 include:
Performance and Productivity
- Faster performance: Microsoft reports significant improvements in solution load times, code navigation, and build/debug cycles.
- Enhanced editor controls: The editor’s bottom margin is now more customizable and informative, displaying unified line, column, and character position, as well as file encoding.
- File exclusions in search: You can now exclude specific files or glob patterns from searches in “Find in Files” and “Quick Find” to reduce noise and speed up results.
- Expanded code coverage: Code coverage tools, previously an exclusive feature of the Enterprise edition, are now available in the Community and Professional editions.
- Inline pull request comments: You can now view and manage pull request comments directly within the IDE, with Markdown rendering.
UI and Design
- Refreshed Fluent UI: The IDE has been redesigned with Microsoft’s Fluent UI, featuring crisp contrast, modern icons, and improved accessibility.
- New themes: Eleven new tinted themes are included for personalization.
- Modernized settings experience: The old “Tools → Options” dialog has been replaced with a more streamlined and searchable interface. Settings are now JSON-backed, making them easier to filter, share, and manage with source control.
Platform and Language Support
- Full support for .NET 10 and C# 14: The IDE is aligned with the latest versions of the .NET framework and C# language, with improvements to things like Hot Reload for Razor projects.
- C++20 as the default: New C++ project templates now default to the C++20 standard.
- Improved tooling for modern workloads: Enhanced support for cloud-native .NET apps with .NET Aspire, updated C++ language features, and smarter Git tooling.
AI Integration
- Deep Copilot integration: GitHub Copilot is more tightly integrated into the IDE, providing features like adaptive paste (adjusting pasted code to fit the project’s style), new context menu actions (explain, optimize, generate comments), and “Did You Mean?” search suggestions.
- AI-assisted profiling: A new AI-powered profiler analyzes CPU and memory usage, identifies bottlenecks, and can even generate benchmarks and suggest optimizations based on natural language commands.
- Support for multiple AI models: You can now connect and use your own large language models (LLMs) from providers like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI by adding your own API keys.
Key Links
Visual Studio 2026 Insider Homepage
What’s New in .NET Framework 10
You can learn more about Visual Studio 2026 Insiders release and see it in action and compared to Visual Studio 2022 in the video below.