Rider 2026.2 Early Access Program Begins With Performance Improvements | The .NET Tools Blog

Rider 2026.2's Early Access Program (EAP) has commenced, offering users a preview of upcoming features with notable performance enhancements, particularly in Roslyn integration for improved branch switching in large solutions. These optimizations include reducing requests, implementing batching, and minimizing data transfer, resulting in branch switching speeds that are up to 100 times faster in some scenarios. For game developers, Rider has reworked asmdef reference handling for Unity projects and improved GDScript support for Godot, including spellchecking. Azure Functions support is being integrated into Rider from the Azure Toolkit plugin, allowing local development and debugging within Docker containers. Aspire projects benefit from enhanced file-based AppHosts and improved dev certificate validation. Users are encouraged to participate in the EAP to test these features and contribute feedback for further refinement.