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

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

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).

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.

its getting bloated and clogged again after a few new versions.

anyone noticing it ?

when it first launched the performance was so better than the 2022.

What is the word on the street for when the next large visual studio version will be released? Does anyone know or have a date range?

I rely on Visual Studio heavily, but VS2026 is extremely buggy, whereas VS2022 was stable for me. All kind of features stop working mid-use, like even search on text. When you experience it, you think you're losing your mind, like, "I swear I typed that right?!". And IDE hangs, of course.

As with much Microsoft software back in the day, my workaround has been: turn off the car, get out of the car, get back in the car, restart the engine.

I'm asking because I know I can't be the only one. And, well, misery loves company.

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?

I remember Visual Studio 2025 to be released end of the year 2025 briefly announced at the end of a Microsoft blog post, but since then I didn't see any news, even at Build 2025.

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!