GitHub has announced the general availability of the Windows 11 arm64 image with Visual Studio 2026 on standard and larger hosted runners. This update introduces a new runner target for developers working with ARM64 architectures.
Adopting the VS2026 Image
To utilize the new environment in your GitHub Actions workflows, update the runs-on label in your workflow configuration to windows-11-vs2026-arm.
Upcoming Migration and Breaking Changes
GitHub plans to migrate the existing windows-11-arm image to use Visual Studio 2026 by default starting September 21, 2026. The rollout is scheduled to complete by September 30, 2026.
Breaking Change: Switching to Visual Studio 2026 may break workflows that depend on the older Visual Studio 2022 toolchain. To mitigate this, update your runs-on target to windows-11-vs2026-arm before the migration date to test compatibility.
Developers who no longer wish to use the Windows 11 arm64 image can target a different runner or change the image assigned to their runner (for larger runners).