It feels like just yesterday we were talking about the latest .NET updates, and now, Microsoft is already giving us a peek at what's next with .NET 11. The first preview landed on February 10th, marking the official kickoff for its 2026 development cycle. This isn't just a minor tweak; it's a significant step forward, aiming for a stable release by November of this year, with two years of Standard Term Support (STS) to back it up.
What's really exciting is the breadth of this update. We're talking about improvements across the board – the runtime, the SDK, libraries, C#, F#, ASP.NET Core, Blazor, and even .NET MAUI. A big theme here is the gradual replacement of Mono with CoreCLR in the runtime, alongside a host of performance enhancements. Microsoft’s recommendation? Get your hands on the latest Visual Studio Insiders or VS Code with the C# Dev Kit to really dive in.
Digging a bit deeper into the runtime, .NET 11 Preview 1 introduces something called "runtime-level async." This sounds like a pretty fundamental change, bringing in better configuration, diagnostics, and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation support. And speaking of performance, the Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler is getting some serious attention. They're focusing on boosting startup throughput, enabling more optimizations, and generally reducing overhead in critical code paths. One specific improvement I found interesting is the increase in the MAX_METHODS limit for the multi-core JIT. This should make a noticeable difference for larger applications and those that are particularly method-dense, smoothing out their startup experience.
They're also tackling overhead by de-virtualizing non-shared generic virtual methods. This might sound a bit technical, but essentially, it's about making method calls faster and paving the way for even more aggressive inlining and optimization. Plus, the JIT is getting smarter with its pattern-based inductive variable analysis, which means more opportunities for loop optimizations – always a good thing for performance.
Now, for those of you working with WebAssembly, there's a significant shift happening. Microsoft is actively working on migrating .NET WebAssembly from the Mono runtime to CoreCLR. While this feature isn't quite ready for prime time in Preview 1, it's a clear indication of where things are headed. As part of this effort, they've enabled RyuJIT for Wasm, specifically for AOT compilation. This is all part of a broader push to reduce .NET's reliance on Mono, even though for many .NET MAUI developers, the underlying Mono usage might not be immediately apparent.
It’s fascinating to see how these underlying changes, even if not directly visible to every developer, contribute to a more robust and performant platform. The journey of .NET continues, and .NET 11 is shaping up to be a pivotal chapter.