The schedule at a glance
Microsoft's .NET Blog splits the event into two halves. All times are Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8).
| Dates | What's happening | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| November 10–11 | Microsoft product team days, including the .NET 11 launch | 8 AM–5 PM PST each day |
| November 12–13 | .NET Conf Community Days | 8 AM–5 PM PST each day |
Microsoft's agenda lets you pick your own time zone and add sessions to your calendar. Since 8 AM PST is 16:00 UTC, readers in Europe, India or Asia-Pacific will want to use that converter. Some of the live sessions will land at unsociable hours.
An earlier "Save the Date" post from August described a three-day event, November 10–12. The later schedule and the community conference site both show a fourth day, November 13, so the three-day description is out of date.
Day one, November 10: the .NET 11 launch
The opening keynote starts at 8 AM PST with Scott Hanselman and the .NET team. Microsoft says it will cover what's new in .NET 11. It will also cover how Copilot and agents fit into .NET development, including for applications you already have.
Highlighted sessions:
- What's new in C#, with Mads Torgersen and Dustin Campbell.
- Modern web development with ASP.NET Core & Blazor in .NET 11, with Daniel Roth.
- The .NET AI Stack: What's New, What's Next, and How It Fits Together, with Luis Quintanilla. It is billed as guidance on choosing and combining .NET's AI building blocks.
- What's New in Aspire for .NET Developers, with Maddy Montaquila and Damian Edwards.
- Beyond Autocomplete: Getting the Most from GitHub Copilot for .NET, with Wendy Breiding.
The day also covers .NET MAUI, WinForms, the dotnet CLI, C# Dev Kit, security and the .NET runtime.
Day two, November 11: Visual Studio and deep dives
Mads Kristensen opens with a Visual Studio keynote at 8 AM PST. Highlighted sessions:
- The State of AI in Visual Studio, with Rachel Kang.
- What's new in Visual Studio, with Jason Chlus.
- What's New in Visual Studio Debugging and Diagnostics, with Harshada Hole.
- What's new in the MCP C# SDK, with Stephen Halter.
- Building the future of agentic UI with Blazor, with Daniel Roth.
- GitHub Copilot modernization, with Mika Dumont. Microsoft describes it as a walkthrough of a .NET upgrade.
Windows app development and AI-assisted .NET MAUI workflows are also on the bill. The announcement doesn't give exact slot times for individual sessions, so check the full agenda before you plan your day.
Community Days, November 12–13
The last two days are run by the community, not by Microsoft's product teams. A September call-for-presenters post says a team led by Javier Lozano, working with .NET Foundation board members and others, handles session selection, hosting and production. In earlier years, Microsoft's own .NET community team did this. Speakers present remotely, possibly from their own time zones.
Sessions were requested as 30-minute talks about building with .NET. Proposals that show what you can do with .NET 11 were preferred. Microsoft's post asked speakers to focus on their own work rather than repeat product team announcements. Expect real-world experience rather than roadmap slides.
The community site, dotnetconf.net, lists the Community Days sessions, speakers and viewing details. It also lists local watch-party events. You can organize your own through January 15, 2027.
What "launch" means for .NET 11
Microsoft Learn currently says .NET 11 is in release candidate, with general availability expected in November 2026. Its RC2 documentation was last updated in mid-October. Visual Studio Magazine reported that Microsoft has said .NET 11 will launch during .NET Conf 2026. Treat the conference as the announced launch event. I haven't seen confirmation that final bits have shipped yet.
Some third-party coverage gives a specific GA date of November 10. Windows Report, covering Preview 7, said Microsoft planned two release candidates, then general availability on November 10, 2026. That lines up with the keynote date. It is reporting on a plan, though, not a post-launch confirmation.
Why upgrade planning matters
Microsoft's lifecycle FAQ puts odd-numbered releases like .NET 11 in the Standard Term Support category. It says STS releases are supported for a minimum of 24 months, or 12 months after a successor release ships, whichever is longer. That is a different track from even-numbered Long Term Support releases such as .NET 10.
Third-party commentary (DotStark, GapVelocity) points out that .NET 8 and .NET 9 reach end of support in November 2026. I couldn't confirm the exact date from a Microsoft primary source in this research. If you run those versions in production, check the official support policy page. Then decide whether to move to .NET 10 LTS, .NET 11, or both. Several of the sessions, especially the Copilot modernization walkthrough, are aimed at exactly that decision.
What's likely to matter to Windows developers
Microsoft's Learn overview of what's new in .NET 11 gives a preview of the likely session themes:
- C# 15 is the default language version for projects that target .NET 11. It adds union types, closed hierarchies and collection expression arguments.
- Runtime Async is a runtime-native async implementation. It no longer needs a preview-feature flag for projects targeting net11.0.
- SDK changes include a
dotnet run -eoption to pass environment variables from the command line. The SDK also gets NativeAOT CLI and MSBuild server improvements. - Windows Forms and WPF each have their own "what's new" documentation for .NET 11.
- The runtime raises its minimum hardware requirements for x86/x64 and Arm64. The docs describe this as requiring more modern instruction sets, so check your deployment targets.
Microsoft's August save-the-date post also names the MCP C# SDK v2.0, MAUI's move to CoreCLR on Android, iOS and Mac Catalyst, and OpenAPI 3.2 as the ASP.NET Core default. Any of these could come up in the sessions.
How to plan your week
- Open the Microsoft agenda at dot.net/conf and set your time zone first.
- Add the keynotes and your must-watch sessions to your calendar.
- Treat the November 10 keynote as the launch moment. Hold production upgrade decisions until the final release and its release notes are live.
- Check your current .NET versions against the support policy. Do this before the conference so you can ask better questions.
- For Community Days, browse dotnetconf.net for the speaker list.
- If you want a local watch party, the community site lists events and lets you host your own through January 15, 2027.
Caveats
This is a vendor-run launch event, so expect the sessions to be upbeat. Many developers will care more about migration friction and support timelines than about keynote demos. Microsoft hasn't said anything in these announcements about recordings. I haven't verified whether on-demand replays will be available, so don't assume you can catch up later.
Bottom line: Block out November 10 at 8 AM PST for the .NET 11 launch keynote. Use the agenda's time-zone converter to plan the rest of the week. Check your support status on .NET 8 and .NET 9 before the event.