Visual Studio September 2026 Update Adds New BYOM Agent and NuGet Fixer

Microsoft has released the Visual Studio September 2026 Stable Channel update for Community, Professional, and Enterprise editions.

The biggest change affects Bring Your Own Model, or BYOM. Visual Studio now routes BYOM entirely through the new Agent (Preview), which uses the GitHub Copilot SDK harness.

This replaces the previous Ask and Agent modes used with custom models.

Developers who previously configured Ollama models will need to add them again manually through Chat > Model Picker > Manage Models.

The updated architecture supports models from Microsoft Foundry, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ollama. Visual Studio will also warn users when a selected model lacks capabilities required by Agent instead of silently failing.

NuGet Audit gets a Copilot powered Fixer

Microsoft has also expanded NuGet Audit.

Warnings NU1901 through NU1904 now include a Fixer action that uses GitHub Copilot Chat together with the NuGet MCP server.

The feature can help developers identify affected packages and apply fixes for known vulnerabilities directly from their Visual Studio workflow.

Visual Studio adds Podman debugging

Attach to Process now supports Podman containers.

Developers can connect directly to processes running inside Podman containers using Visual Studio’s existing debugging tools, reducing the need to switch to separate tools for container debugging.

Microsoft adds smaller editor improvements

Developers can now disable or customize branch highlighting for && and || operators.

The option is available through the context menu and Visual Studio settings, giving developers more control over how logical branches appear in the editor.

Microsoft has also been updating other parts of its developer tooling. The company recently released Visual Studio Code 1.139 with faster AI agent sessions and remote development improvements.

Microsoft also announced that WSL Containers is generally available, adding new CLI, API, and enterprise management capabilities.