Microsoft is accelerating Visual Studio’s update cycle, moving from quarterly to monthly feature updates and introducing annual major releases each November (alongside .NET). Meanwhile, Visual C++ (MSVC) is adopting .NET’s release cadence, meaning most versions will receive only nine months of support.
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Principal program manager Paul Chapman said the changes align Visual Studio with VS Code’s monthly updates and keep “GitHub Copilot experiences always up to date.” Previously, Visual Studio 2022 remained current for four years. In the case of VS Code, developers have become used to a procession of AI-related feature changes every month, and it seems that keeping up with Copilot is also a factor in these Visual Studio changes.
The new one year lifecycle for Visual Studio does have consequences for developers using a standalone license rather than a subscription. “If you use a standalone Professional license, you simply purchase the new annual version each year,” said Chapman. A developer responded that “I hate it that they are planning to release a new major version each year from now on. Means you need to either buy a subscription or purchase a new product key each year.”
