Visual Studio 2026 Product Family System Requirements

This page contains the minimum system requirements for the Visual Studio 2026 family of products. For information on compatibility, see Visual Studio Platform Targeting and Compatibility. If you need help with improving performance, see Visual Studio performance tips and tricks.

For additional information, see the Visual Studio release notes.

Visual Studio System Requirements

Visual Studio runs best on Windows 11 with 64 GB RAM and a CPU with 16 cores or more. It runs faster and is more responsive than Visual Studio 2022 on the same hardware.

The following products support the minimum system requirements below:

• Visual Studio Enterprise
• Visual Studio Professional
• Visual Studio Community
• Visual Studio Build Tools
• Visual Studio Team Explorer

Supported Operating Systems

Visual Studio is supported on the following 64-bit operating systems:

• Windows 11 — supported versions of the following editions: Home, Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations, Enterprise, and Education, including ARM64 editions
  • Supported Windows 11 OS versions can be found at Windows 11 Enterprise and Education Support.
• Windows 10 — supported versions of the following editions: Home, Professional, Education, and Enterprise.
  • Supported Windows 10 OS versions can be found at Windows 10 Enterprise and Education Support.
• Windows Server: Standard and Datacenter editions of 2025, 2022, 2019.

The following environments are not supported to run Visual Studio:

• 32-bit and ARM32 operating systems. Windows 10 ARM64.
• Windows in S mode, Windows Enterprise IoT, Windows IoT Core, Windows Enterprise LTSC editions, and Windows 10 Team Edition. You may use Visual Studio to build apps that run on supported editions of Windows.
• Server IoT and Minimal Server Interface options for Windows Server.
• Administrator protection mode. These development scenarios require running Visual Studio as an administrator.
• Windows containers, except for the Visual Studio Build Tools.
• Virtual machine environments without a full Windows operating system.
• Application virtualization solutions, such as such as Microsoft App-V or MSIX for Windows, or third-party app virtualization technologies.
• Multiple simultaneous users using the software on the same machine, including shared virtual desktop infrastructure machines or a pooled Windows Virtual Desktop host pool.

The following workloads and components are not supported by Visual Studio ARM64 running on ARM64 operating systems:

• Azure development, with the exception of the Container development tools, which are supported.
• Data storage and processing, with the exception of the SQL Server Data Tools, which are supported.
• Data science and analytical applications.
• Python development.
• Mobile development with C++.
• Office/SharePoint development.
• Microsoft Blend.
• The XAML designer runs in an x86 process on ARM64.

Hardware

For guidance on improving performance, see Optimize Visual Studio performance.

• ARM64 or AMD64/x64 processor; Quad-core or better recommended; works best with 16 core or more. ARM32 processors are not supported.
• Minimum of 4 GB of RAM. Many factors impact resources used. We recommend 16 GB RAM for typical professional solutions; works best with 64 GB RAM.
• Windows 365: Minimum 2 vCPU and 8 GB RAM. 4 vCPU and 16 GB of RAM recommended.
• Hard disk space: Minimum of 2.5 GB up to 210 GB of available space, depending on features installed; typical installations require 20-50 GB of free space. We recommend installing Windows and Visual Studio on a solid-state drive (SSD) to increase performance.
• Video card that supports a minimum display resolution of WXGA (1366 by 768); Visual Studio will work best at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 or higher.
  • Minimum resolution assumes zoom, DPI settings, and text scaling are set at 100%. If not set to 100%, minimum resolution should be scaled accordingly. For example, if you set the Windows display ‘Scale and layout’ setting on your Surface Book, which has a 3000x2000 physical display, to 200%, then Visual Studio would see a logical screen resolution of 1500x1000, meeting the minimum 1366x768 requirement.

Additional Requirements and Guidance

• Administrator rights are required to install or update Visual Studio. Refer to the Visual Studio Administrator Guide for additional considerations and guidance for how to install, deploy, update, and configure Visual Studio across an organization.
• .NET Framework 4.7.2 or above is required to install Visual Studio. Visual Studio requires .NET Framework 4.8 to run. If .NET Framework 4.8 isn't already installed, it will be installed during setup.
• The WebView2 runtime is required to install Visual Studio. If it isn't already installed, it will be installed during setup. The Visual Studio installation will fail if WebView2 can't be installed successfully (either because of installation error or Group Policy install or update restrictions).
• Team Foundation Server 2019 Office Integration requires Office 2021 or later.
• Smart App Control, which is a Windows feature, is not recommended to be enabled on development machines. Any setting other than "off" might negatively impact Visual Studio performance.
• The integrated Windows Terminal is supported per the minimum OS requirements for Windows Terminal, currently Windows 10 20H1. Windows Server 2016 is not supported. On versions of Windows that do not support the integrated Windows Terminal, use the Terminal that ships with that version of Windows.

Supported Languages

Visual Studio is available in English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. You can select the language of Visual Studio during installation. The Visual Studio Installer is available in the same fourteen languages, and will match the language of Windows, if available.

Remote Tools and IntelliTrace Standalone Collector for Visual Studio System Requirements

The Remote Tools and IntelliTrace Standalone Collector support the same system requirements as Visual Studio with the following changes:

• Also supported on Windows 10 on ARM, Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC.
• x86 and AMD64/x64 require a 1.6 GHz or faster processor.
• Requires 1 GB of RAM (1.5 GB if running on a virtual machine).
• Requires 1 GB of available hard disk space.
• Requires 1024 by 768 or higher display resolution.
• For the best experience, use the most recent update of these diagnostic tools for your version of Visual Studio.

Microsoft Visual Studio Build Tools System Requirements

The Build Tools support the same system requirements as Visual Studio with the following changes:

• Also installs on the Server Core option for Windows Server Core 2025, Windows Server Core 2022, and Windows Server 2019.
• Also installs into a Windows container..
• Requires 2.3 GB to 60 GB of available hard disk space, depending on installed features.

Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable System Requirements

To download the Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable, see visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads. The Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable supports the following system requirements:

• Requires Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows Server 2025, Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, or Windows Server 2016.
• Requires x64 or ARM64. ARM32 is not supported.
• Requires 1 GB of RAM (1.5 GB if running on a virtual machine).
• Requires 50 MB of available hard disk space.

How are we doing?

We would love to hear from you! For issues, let us know through the Report a Problem option in the upper right-hand. corner of either the installer or the Visual Studio IDE itself. The icon is located in the upper right-hand corner. You can track your issues in the Visual Studio Developer Community, where you can ask questions, find answers and submit product suggestions. You can get free installation help through our Live Chat support.