Visual Studio Roadmap

by
Rob Sanfilippo

by
Rob Sanfilippo

Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Rob worked at Microsoft for 14 years where he designed technologies for Microsoft products and... more

Visual Studio (VS) is a Windows-based integrated development environment (IDE) that provides graphical tools for designing, coding, debugging, and testing software. It can be used to create managed applications based on Microsoft’s .NET runtimes and languages, such as C#, and traditional, unmanaged C and C++ applications. It can also be used to build cross-platform Android and iOS mobile applications and C++ applications that target Linux. Other languages and platforms are supported with extensions. VS includes extensive integration with Azure to help developers leverage the Microsoft-hosted cloud platform and with GitHub, Azure DevOps, and Git to help developers work with source control and application life-cycle management services.

Product: Visual Studio

Licensing: Visual Studio Licensing

Near Term (2025–2026)

VS 2026, the latest major version, became generally available in Nov. 2025.

There are improvements in several areas of VS 2026, but the new version is not an overhaul of the product, and there is no requirement to upgrade to VS 2026 unless developers want the new features. The upgrade will probably keep the VS user base satisfied, but it is unlikely to attract a substantial number of new customers.