The April 2026 update to Visual Studio centers on agentic workflows: cloud agent sessions launch directly from the IDE, custom agents gain user-level support, and a new Debugger agent validates fixes against live runtime behavior.

Highlights

Here’s what’s new with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio 2026. Check the Insiders channel for the latest:

  • Cloud agent integration: Start new cloud agent sessions directly from Visual Studio. Select Cloud from the agent picker, describe your task, and the cloud agent creates a GitHub issue and pull request on remote infrastructure while you keep working.
  • Build your own custom agents: Custom agents now support user-level definitions stored in %USERPROFILE%/.github/agents/, so your personal agents travel with you across projects.
  • Use agent skills: Agent skills are now discovered from additional locations including .claude/skills/ and .agents/skills/ directories alongside the existing .github/skills/ paths, broadening compatibility so teams can organize skills in the convention that fits their workflow. See awesome-copilot for community examples.
  • Agentic issue to resolution: A new debugger agent workflow validates bugs against real runtime behavior. Start from a GitHub or Azure DevOps issue, and the agent reproduces, instruments, diagnoses, and suggests a targeted fix through live execution.
  • Customizable Copilot keyboard shortcuts: Customize the keyboard shortcuts for accepting Copilot inline suggestions. Change the keys for Edit.AcceptSuggestion, Edit.AcceptNextWordInSuggestion, and Edit.AcceptNextLineInSuggestion in Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard.
  • New chat history panel: Browse and navigate your Copilot chat sessions with a dedicated history panel that shows chat titles, message previews, and timestamps.
  • C++ code editing tools for agent mode: C++ Code Editing Tools are now generally available by default. The get_symbol_call_hierarchy and get_symbol_class_hierarchy tools give Copilot language-aware navigation for C++ codebases.
  • Auto-decoding in text visualizer: The Auto-detect and format button in the text visualizer uses Copilot to identify encoding or compression formats and decode strings automatically.

Download Visual Studio 2026 to experience all the new Copilot features today. To learn more about what’s new, check out the Visual Studio blog and release notes.

What’s next for Copilot in Visual Studio

Stay up to date on the latest Copilot features by following the Visual Studio blog, where you’ll find roadmap updates and opportunities to share feedback.

For the latest news, release notes, videos, and community conversations, visit the Visual Studio Hub, your central resource for all things Visual Studio.