.NET 11 or stay on .NET 10? What the November 2026 release means for your applications
.NET 11 arrives in November 2026, as .NET 8 and 9 lose support. Who should move to .NET 10 now, who can wait, and why old servers may not run .NET 11.
Vlado Pandžić · Founder · Senior .NET architect
Published · 4 min read
Contents
In November 2026, two things happen in the same week. Microsoft releases .NET 11, and .NET 8 and .NET 9 lose support. For many companies, that raises one question: do we jump straight to .NET 11, or go to .NET 10?
The short answer: if you are on .NET 8 or 9, go to .NET 10 now and do not wait. If you are already on .NET 10, there is no rush. And before anyone plans .NET 11, check the hardware it will run on.
Where each version stands
| Version | Type | Supported until |
|---|---|---|
| .NET 8 | Long-term support (LTS) | 10 November 2026 |
| .NET 9 | Standard-term support (STS) | 10 November 2026 |
| .NET 10 | Long-term support (LTS) | 14 November 2028 |
| .NET 11 | Standard-term support (STS) | About November 2028, two years after release |
The interesting line is the last one. Standard-term releases are supported for two years, so .NET 11 ends at roughly the same time as .NET 10, even though it comes out a year later. Moving from .NET 10 to .NET 11 does not buy you more support. It buys you the new features.
.NET 11 is currently a release candidate, with general availability expected in November; Microsoft launches it at .NET Conf, 10 to 13 November. Our .NET end of support tool shows every version with a countdown, and is updated when the release is out.
On .NET 8 or .NET 9: go to .NET 10 now
Waiting for .NET 11 is the most expensive option. Your current version stops getting security fixes on 10 November, and a brand-new release always needs a few weeks before every library you depend on supports it. .NET 10 has been out for a year, the libraries are ready, and it is supported until November 2028.
For most applications, the move from .NET 8 to .NET 10 is days of work, not weeks. The change starts in the project file:
<TargetFramework>net10.0</TargetFramework>What usually takes the time is everything around it: NuGet packages, build pipelines, Docker images and the servers. Our article on .NET 8 and 9 end of support goes through it step by step.
On .NET 10: no rush
.NET 10 is a long-term support release. Staying on it until the next long-term release is a perfectly sound plan, and it is what most business applications should do. Move to .NET 11 only if one of its new features solves a real problem for you, and if your team is ready to upgrade again within two years.
What .NET 11 brings, briefly:
- Runtime-native async, with cleaner stack traces and less overhead in code that awaits a lot.
- Library additions such as Zstandard compression, decimal floating-point types and more in System.Text.Json.
- Performance work across the JIT and the runtime, as in every release.
Useful, but rarely a reason on its own to upgrade a business application ahead of plan.
Check the hardware before .NET 11
This one is easy to miss. .NET 11 raises the minimum processor requirements. On x86 and x64, it needs at least the x86-64-v2 instruction set. According to Microsoft, that covers every processor still supported by Intel and AMD, with the last older chips going out of support around 2013. On older hardware, a .NET 11 application does not start at all.
That rarely matters on modern servers or in Azure. It does matter for the old physical server in the back room, the industrial PC on a production line, or the virtual machine on a host nobody has replaced in ten years. If those are where your applications run, check them before planning .NET 11. Old servers often come with an old Windows Server too, as covered in our article on Windows Server 2012 R2.
Still on .NET Framework?
.NET 11 changes nothing for applications on .NET Framework 4.8. They keep running, supported as part of Windows. The question for them is not .NET 10 or 11, but when and how to move to modern .NET at all, which our article on migrating from .NET Framework to .NET 10 covers.
How we work
This is exactly what we do. ProCoding is a .NET studio in Split, Croatia, and we upgrade .NET applications to supported versions: the inventory of applications and servers, the upgrade with tests, and the build pipelines and servers around it. More on our .NET and Blazor work. The first step is a free 30-minute call.
Sources
- What’s new in .NET 11, Microsoft Learn
- What’s new in the .NET 11 runtime, Microsoft Learn
- .NET releases, patches and support, Microsoft Learn
- .NET and .NET Core support policy, Microsoft
This article is general information only, not legal, tax, financial or other professional advice. Scenarios, examples and calculations are illustrative. Terms of use and disclaimer.