It's been a long time coming and now it's finally here

I've been holding off on buying Visual Studio 2022 standalone since its been announced that 2026 standalone IDE is gonna be available as of today but on the MS website it still takes you to the 2022 Version. What gives?

Long ago, I tried side-loading a preview version of Visual Studio with an older version on my machine, and it screwed up my dev environment. I was forced to reset and reinstall.

The new Visual Studio 2026 looks good! I wanted to try it, but my previous experience held me back.

Has anyone here tried sideloading it? Is there anything I should pay attention to?

Have you guys already switched to VS2026, or are you waiting for the full release? Is it worth it to already switch or are there still some breaking issues?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-2026-insiders-is-here/

download page:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/insiders/

I expected fundamentally better user experience about vs2026, but it feels like it's the same slow thing with some rounded corners and different icons.

Apparently Microsoft has been removing all references and links to VS 2022 from pretty much everywhere in their websites. Even if you search for Visual Studio 2022, and download the (supposedly) 2022 installer, it will download the 2026 installer. They've made most VS2022 links redirect to 2026 ones.

Anyway, after a bit of digging in this subreddit I found the one working page that lets you download Visual Studio 2022, and I'm making it a post so that others can find it more easily.

Here's the link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2022/release-history

Community Version: https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vs_community.exe (or just scroll down to "Current 17.14")

I tried to download Visual Studio 2022 community edition but it would not let me. Is there some way to do this?

See the VS 2026 release notes for everything that's changed in the product, the MSVC compiler team's blog post about C++23 Core Language features (yes, they're finally working on C++23!), and as always, the STL Changelog's detailed summary of everything we merged for this release. I take great care to record every single commit that goes into the STL, excluding only README updates and utterly trivial or internal-only changes.

If you have questions or concerns about the product, I can typically get MSVC team members to respond directly here (and I can answer STL questions myself).

Edit: Shortly after I posted this, we also published What's New for C++ Developers in Visual Studio 2026 version 18.0 which covers C++-specific IDE features (and some overlapping mentions of compiler and library changes).

Has anyone obtained a free activation key for Visual Studio pro 2026?

Anyone know when/where I can install VS 2026 Professional (RTM) rather than Insiders? I'd prefer to wait for the RTM version so I can use it for production development.

Update: freskgrank pointed me to the link. Installing RTM now :) Super exciting!

Recommended is 64 Gb RAM and 16 CPU Core. Wow!!! I can already feel the power.

Sharing my experience with Visual Studio 2026 after one hour of usage:

I didn’t really feel like I was using a mature IDE — it feels more like something designed for kids to play with.

The overall design is uncomfortable compared to Visual Studio 2022.

And oh, the blue color! They removed my favorite theme and replaced it with nonsensical colors that strain your eyes after just a short time. Even the dark mode doesn’t make sense. I really don’t understand what happened with the theming — and it seems I’m not alone, as many people are complaining about the new look and color scheme.

Based on these concerns, I’d rather stick with Visual Studio 2022 than use what feels like a toy.

And, the installer fully supports moving workloads from 2022—and can remove previous installation if you choose :)

Previous versions of Visual Studio had options to purchase it.

I couldn't find any options this time. Does anyone know if I couldn't find it because I didn't search hard enough, or if it no longer exists?

(Wrong flair, I know, the one for 2026 does not exist yet)

Hi, im a begginer in c++, currently im learning c++ in UDEMY with vs2022 (my course is in vs2022) but i just realize that vs2026 is available, my question is... should i buy another course to focus in this New versión or should i still learning in that course of vs2022? I just have 2 months learning c++, and i want to be an Unreal Engine video game developer 🥹, thanks you all.