.NET 5 to Unify .NET Offerings in 2020

• .NET 5, planned for 2020, will merge current .NET offerings into one runtime and API library, which could help developers and IT staff.
• Teams working with current .NET offerings will have viable migration paths, but they should use .NET Core for new projects.
• Some .NET Framework applications will not be compatible with .NET 5 and will have to stay with .NET Framework 4.8, which will be the final version.

.NET offerings deliver class libraries (sets of development APIs) and a runtime environment required by managed code applications in C#, Visual Basic, and other Microsoft programming languages. Development teams and IT staff using or evaluating .NET offerings should review the .NET roadmap, which Microsoft updated in May 2019, to ensure their own project plans are compatible. 

.NET 5 to Consolidate Three Existing Offerings

.NET technologies have been delivered in many forms and versions, which has helped developers reuse code across platforms and environments. However, the variety of offerings has also led to difficulties with cross- and backward-compatibility and version interoperability. The challenge for developers has been to target the most appropriate .NET offering for an application’s requirements and the expected deployment environment.