.NET Conf 2026: .NET 11 Launch Dates, Keynotes and Session Schedule

Microsoft has published the full schedule for .NET Conf 2026, its free online developer conference, which runs from November 10 to 13 and serves as the official launch of .NET 11. The agenda lists 71 sessions over four days, opening with a keynote by Scott Hanselman and Damian Edwards at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday. Thurrott.com reported the schedule on November 3, a week before the event starts.

What is .NET Conf 2026?

.NET Conf is an annual virtual event co-organised by Microsoft and the .NET developer community. This is the 16th edition, according to the official conference site. It is aimed at developers who build with .NET, C# and Visual Studio, and it is where Microsoft traditionally ships the year’s new major version of the .NET platform.

The event is free and online, so there is no venue or travel cost. Microsoft says the programme includes keynote announcements, technical deep dives, case studies and community sessions. Viewers can follow along on the .NET YouTube channel and other official social accounts, using the hashtag #dotnetconf.

When are the .NET Conf 2026 keynotes?

The official agenda lists all times in Pacific Time, with sessions running from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day.

• Tuesday, November 10, 8:00–9:00 a.m. PT: Opening keynote with Scott Hanselman and Damian Edwards. Thurrott.com reports that it covers what is new in .NET 11 and how Copilot and AI agents fit into .NET development.
• Wednesday, November 11, 8:00–8:30 a.m. PT: Visual Studio keynote with Mads Kristensen.

For viewers in Pakistan, an 8:00 a.m. Pacific start is 9:00 p.m. Pakistan time on the same day, since the US will be on standard time by then.

What is on the schedule?

The first day focuses on the .NET 11 release itself. After the keynote, Mads Torgersen and Dustin Campbell present what is new in C#, followed by sessions on ASP.NET Core and Blazor, Windows Forms, .NET MAUI for mobile and desktop apps, the C# Dev Kit, Aspire, security, numerics, the .NET runtime and post-quantum cryptography.

Day two turns to tools. Sessions cover AI in Visual Studio, Git and debugging in Visual Studio, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) C# SDK, building Windows apps with WinUI and AI agents, modernising older .NET apps with GitHub Copilot, Azure services for .NET developers and Entity Framework Core 11, which adds vector search.

Days three and four are mostly given to community speakers. Thurrott.com says these Community Days are run by a team led by Javier Lozano together with .NET Foundation board members and volunteers. Topics on the agenda range from building a terminal app in 30 minutes and production lessons from Blazor WebAssembly to multi-agent systems with Aspire, OpenTelemetry in ASP.NET Core 11 and using C# with the Godot game engine.

What is new in .NET 11?

When Microsoft announced the dates in August, Jon Galloway, a principal technical programme manager on the .NET team, listed some of the headline features coming in .NET 11:

• Union types in C# 15, a long-requested language feature.
• .NET MAUI on CoreCLR for Android, iOS and Mac Catalyst apps.
• ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates, including richer static server-side rendering, better form validation, smaller Blazor WebAssembly apps, a new development server and closer integration with Aspire.
• Minimal API improvements, including async validation and support for C# union types.
• OpenAPI 3.2 as the default.
• Version 2.0 of the official MCP C# SDK, which is stateless by default.

The MCP work matters because the Model Context Protocol has become a common way to connect AI agents to tools and data, and an official, stable C# SDK makes it easier for .NET teams to build agent features.

Why it matters

.NET is used for a wide range of business software, from web back ends and internal tools to Windows desktop apps and games. A new major version changes what developers can use in production, and the launch event is where teams learn what to upgrade and when.

This year’s agenda also shows how far AI has moved into everyday developer tooling. Copilot, AI agents and MCP appear across both keynote days, alongside the usual language and performance updates. The same theme runs through Microsoft’s bigger business event a week later, covered in our Microsoft Ignite 2026 preview.

What happens next

.NET Conf 2026 opens on Tuesday, November 10, at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time. The agenda and speaker list are on the official .NET Conf site, and registration is free. Sessions are streamed live online through the official .NET channels.

For developers planning upgrades, the first-day keynote and the “What’s new in C#” session are the ones to watch for the details of the .NET 11 release.