Microsoft has shipped .NET 10, the platform created from a combination of .NET Framework and .NET Core, including C# 14 and F# 10. Visual Studio 2026 has also been released at .NET Conf, the online event that concludes today.

.NET 10 is a long term support release that will be supported for three years. It features more support for AI agent development, and improvements for cryptography

The support for building intelligent agentic Ai systems is based on Microsoft Agent Framework, which we looked at last month. The Framework combines elements of Semantic Kernel and AutoGen, and provides patterns and infrastructure. Developers can create sequential, concurrent and handoff workflows, and can integrate tools from simple C# functions to full Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. The framework has built-in support for dependency injection, middleware pipelines, and OpenTelemetry for observability.

Cryptography support has also been improved with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) support, which is designed to be secure against attacks now and from future quantum computers. This comes in the format of support for Windows CNG (Cryptography Next Generation), which uses ML-DSA and ML-KEM algorithms with Windows cryptography APIs. ML-DSA now uses the HashML-DSA variant for improved security characteristics; and composite ML-DSA uses hybrid approaches combining traditional and quantum-resistant algorithms.

C# 14 has a number of new features and enhancements, including support for field-backed properties to provide a smoother path from auto-implemented properties to writing custom get and set accessors; and an improved nameof expression that now supports unbound generic types, such as List<>, where it returns the name of the type without requiring a type argument.

First-class support for implicit conversions of Span<T> and ReadOnlySpan<T>. has been added, and parameter modifiers like ref, in, or out are allowed in lambda expressions without specifying parameter types.

Support has also been added for partial instance constructors and partial events, complementing partial methods and properties introduced in C# 13.

F# 10 has also been improved, with new language features require enabling the <LangVersion>preview</LangVersion> project property in .fsproj files; changes to the FSharp.Core standard library are applied automatically to projects compiled with the new SDK unless a lower FSharp.Core version is explicitly pinned; and general improvements and bug fixes in the compiler implementation.

Alongside the cryptography improvements, the .NET 10 libraries introduce new APIs in globalization, numerics, serialization, collections, and diagnostics, and when working with ZIP files.

The .NET 10 SDK includes improvements to dotnet test, standardization of the CLI command order, and updates to the CLI to generate native tab-completion scripts for popular shells. For containers, console apps can natively create container images, and a new property lets you explicitly set the format of container images.

The ASP.NET Core 10.0 release introduces several new features and enhancements, including Blazor improvements, OpenAPI enhancements, and minimal API updates.

.NET MAUI has also been improved, as we covered here, along with the improvements to Entity Framework. 

Finally, Visual Studio 2026, successor to Visual Studio 2022, has been released with faster startup times, and a redesigned UI that promises fewer pauses and a "lightweight, effortless vibe".  

.NET 10 is available for download now.

More Information

.NET 10 Download

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