Microsoft has released .NET 11 Preview 3, the third preview of its upcoming Standard Term Support version, which is scheduled for general availability in November 2026. As reported, this update brings changes across the runtime, SDK, libraries, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, .NET MAUI, and C#, and is available for download from the official .NET website.
On the runtime side, Microsoft reported that Runtime Async no longer requires the preview features flag. Projects targeting net11.0 can now enable the runtime-async feature switch without also setting EnablePreviewFeatures to true, and support was added for NativeAOT and ReadyToRun.
The JIT compiler received further optimizations that fold multi-target switch expressions into branchless checks, remove more redundant bounds checks on index-from-end access, and speed up unsigned integer to float and double casts on older x86 hardware. Futhermore, Browser and WebAssembly workloads gained WebCIL payload loading and improved debugging symbols.
In the SDK and CLI, the dotnet sln command can now create and edit solution filter files directly, and file-based apps gained a #:include directive that lets shared helpers move into separate files. The dotnet run command accepts a new -e option for passing environment variables from the command line, and dotnet watch now integrates with Aspire app hosts, automatically relaunches after a crash, and handles Ctrl+C more gracefully for WinForms and WPF apps.
ASP.NET Core added Zstandard response compression and request decompression, enabled by default. Blazor's Virtualize component as explained, no longer assumes that every item has the same height and now adapts to measured sizes at runtime, and Kestrel begins processing HTTP/3 requests without waiting for the control stream, which the team said reduces first-request latency on new connections.
Entity Framework Core introduced a new GetEntriesForState API on ChangeTracker that returns tracked entities in selected states without forcing a DetectChanges pass first. The preview also adds RemoveDbContext and RemoveExtension helpers for swapping providers, which Microsoft noted is useful in tests.
For .NET MAUI, the Map control received pin clustering, custom pin icons, custom JSON styling, and new click events for circles, polygons, and polylines. A built-in LongPressGestureRecognizer was added, implicit XAML namespace declarations are now enabled by default, and Permissions.PostNotifications is now implemented on iOS. On Android, the release adds preview support for Android 17 and API 37.
C# 15 also gained improved IDE support for the new union types introduced in Preview 2.
namespace System.Runtime.CompilerServices
{
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Struct, AllowMultiple = false)]
public sealed class UnionAttribute : Attribute;
public interface IUnion
{
object? Value { get; }
}
}
Other changes in this release are container image updates, WPF and Windows Forms fixes, and various breaking changes. For interested readers, the full release notes are available on the dotnet/core repository on GitHub.