News · written 8 November 2026. A summary for readers, not technical advice — check the sources at the end for the details.

.NET is Microsoft's free, open-source platform for building apps in C#, F# and Visual Basic — desktop programs for Windows, web services, and mobile apps. A new version arrives every November, and this month brings both a launch and two important end dates.

.NET 11 is about to launch

.NET Conf 2026, a virtual event, runs 10-13 November. Microsoft calls it "the official launch event for .NET 11". It has not given a separate release date, so expect the final version during the event — and treat any exact date you see elsewhere as a guess.

The release candidates have been out for a while. RC 2 arrived on 13 October 2026 and RC 3 on 25 October, both with a "go-live" licence — Microsoft supports them in production. RC 2's notes include:

• .NET MAUI (the cross-platform app framework): you can now create an app with its user interface written in C#, without XAML.
• Windows Forms updates, including visual styles and deferred form reveal.
• NuGet: a setting for a minimum package publication age, so brand-new package versions can be held back for a while, which can help guard against a bad release.
• Experimental ML-KEM and HPKE encryption APIs, part of the move to cryptography designed to resist future quantum computers.

To try it, the RCs work in the Visual Studio 2026 Insiders release and in Visual Studio Code with the C# Dev Kit.

.NET 8 and .NET 9: end of support on 10 November

According to Microsoft's support policy page, .NET 8 (a long-term support release from November 2023) and .NET 9 (a standard-term release from November 2024) both reach end of support on 10 November 2026. After that they get no more fixes, including security fixes.

Long-term support (LTS) releases get three years of free updates and standard-term (STS) releases two. The current LTS release is .NET 10, supported until 14 November 2028 — the natural next step for an app on 8 or 9.

What it means for small publishers

If you ship a desktop or web app built on .NET 8 or 9, plan the move to .NET 10 (or to .NET 11 once it is out) soon, test it, and publish an update — your users keep getting security fixes only on a supported version. Apps that bundle the runtime need a rebuild to pick up those fixes.

Sources

• Microsoft .NET Blog — .NET 11 Release Candidate 2, 13 October 2026 (go-live licence, features, tooling).
• Microsoft — .NET Conf 2026 (10-13 November, launch event for .NET 11).
• Microsoft — .NET and .NET Core support policy (end-of-support dates, RC 3, LTS and STS lengths).

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