.NET
Developers	.NET Foundation and the open-source community
Initial release	June 27, 2016; 9 years ago (2016-06-27)
Stable release	10.0.0[1]  / 11 November 2025; 16 days ago (11 November 2025)
Preview release	10.0.0-rc.2[2]  / 14 October 2025; 44 days ago (14 October 2025)
Repository	github.com/dotnet/runtime
Written in	C#,C++ andC
Operating system	cross-platform:Windows,Linux,macOS,Android,iOS
Platform	IA-32,x86-64, 64-bitARM,Power ISA (ppc64le),IBM Z and LinuxONE (s390x)[3]
Predecessor	.NET Framework
Type	Software framework
License	MIT[4]
Website	dotnet.microsoft.com

The.NET platform (pronounced as "dot net"; formerly named.NET Core) is afree and open-source,managed computersoftware framework forWindows,Linux, andmacOSoperating systems.^[5] It is a cross-platform successor to the.NET Framework. The project is mainly developed byMicrosoft employees by way of the.NET Foundation and is today released under anMIT License.^[4]

New versions of the .NET platform are released annually, typically in November. The most recent version of .NET is .NET 10, released in November 2025, which is a long-term support (LTS) version, and is scheduled to receive updates until November 2028.^[6]

In the late 1990s, Microsoft began developing amanaged code runtime and programming language (C#) which it billed together as part of the ".NET platform", with the core runtime andsoftware libraries comprising the.NET Framework.

At the heart of the .NET Platform is the .NET Framework, a high-productivity, multilanguage development and execution environment for building and running Web services with important features such as cross-language inheritance and debugging.^[7]

Soon after the announcement of the C# language at theProfessional Developers Conference in 2000 and previews of its software became available, Microsoft began a standardization effort throughECMA for what it dubbed theCommon Language Infrastructure. The company continued development and support of its own implementation asproprietary, closed source software in the meantime.^{[citation needed]}

On November 12, 2014,Microsoft introduced.NET Core—an open-source,cross-platform^[8] successor^[9] to.NET Framework—and releasedsource code for the .NET CoreCoreCLR implementation, source for the "entire [...] library stack" for .NET Core,^[10] and announced the adoption of a conventional ("bazaar"-like)open-source development model under the stewardship of the.NET Foundation.Miguel de Icaza describes .NET Core as a "redesigned version of .NET that is based on the simplified version of the class libraries",^[11] and Microsoft's Immo Landwerth explained that .NET Core would be "the foundation of all future .NET platforms". At the time of the announcement, the initial release of the .NET Core project had been seeded with a subset of the libraries' source code and coincided with the relicensing of Microsoft's existing .NET reference source away from the restrictions of theMs-RSL. Landwerth acknowledged the disadvantages of the formerly selected shared license, explaining that it madecodename Rotor "a non-starter" as a community-developed open source project because it did not meet the criteria of anOpen Source Initiative (OSI) approved license.^[12][13][14]

.NET Core 1.0 was released on June 27, 2016,^[15] along withMicrosoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, which enables .NET Core development.^[16] .NET Core 1.0.4 and .NET Core 1.1.1 were released along with .NET Core Tools 1.0 and Visual Studio 2017 on March 7, 2017.^[17]

.NET Core 2.0 was released on August 14, 2017, along with Visual Studio 2017 15.3, ASP.NET Core 2.0, andEntity Framework Core 2.0.^[18] .NET Core 2.1 was released on May 30, 2018.^[19] NET Core 2.2 was released on December 4, 2018.^[20]

.NET Core 3 was released on September 23, 2019.^[21] NET Core 3 adds support for Windows desktop application development^[22] and significant performance improvements throughout the base library.

In November 2020, Microsoft released .NET 5.0.^[23] The "Core" branding was abandoned and version 4.0 was skipped to avoid conflation with .NET Framework, of which the latest releases had all used 4.xversioning for all significant (non-bugfix) releases since 2010.

.NET Core Runtime roughly usessemantic versioning, themajor.minor.patch format. Major versions are incremented with "significant changes", API-breaking changes, or with the major version increase in an existing dependency. It should happen yearly. Minor versions are incremented with the addition of API features, dependencies, or with the minor version increase in an existing dependency. Patch versions are given for bug fixes, new platform support, or other changes not included above.^[36] As of 2019, runtime versions are backwards-compatible within the same major version number. For example, .NET Core 2.2 is able to run programs built for .NET Core 2.1. Runtime versions in the same minor version.^[37] This appears to have relaxed since .NET 5. A "roll-forward" behavior allows any .NET program to be run on any newer version given the correct settings.^[36]

The SDK does not use semantic versioning. As of 2019, it supports targetingevery runtime version prior to its maximum supported version.^[37] As of 2020, this extends down to.NET Framework runtimes as well, though downloading an additional "targeting pack" fromNuGet may be necessary.^[38][39] The major and minor versions of an SDK always matches the major and minor versions of the runtime it contains or is aligned for.^[36]

Alpine Linux, which primarily supports and usesmusl libc,^[40] is supported since .NET Core 2.1.^[41]

WindowsArm64 is natively supported since .NET 5. Previously, .NET on ARM meant applications compiled for the x86 architecture and run through the ARM emulation layer.^[30]

Linux .NET runs on Power ISA to some extent since .NET 7, officially no support is claimed by Microsoft but .NET does contain code for Power ISA compatibility for Linux systems and is able to be compiled for Power ISA systems specifically 64 bitLittle Endian variant.^[42]

.NET fully supportsC# andF# (andC++/CLI as of 3.1; only enabled on Windows) and supportsVisual Basic .NET (for version 15.5 in .NET Core 5.0.100-preview.4, and some old versions supported in old .NET Core).^[43]

VB.NET compiles and runs on .NET, but as of .NET Core 3.1, the separate Visual Basic Runtime is not implemented. Microsoft initially announced that .NET Core 3 would include the Visual Basic Runtime, but after two years the timeline for such support was updated to .NET 5.^[44][45]

.NET supports the followingcross-platform scenarios:ASP.NET Coreweb apps, command-line/console apps, libraries andUniversal Windows Platform apps. Prior to .NET Core 3.0, it did not implementWindows Forms orWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which render the standardGUI for desktop software on Windows.^[46] However, from .NET Core 3 on, it started implementing them along withUniversal Windows Platform (UWP).^[47] It was also possible to write cross-platform graphical applications using .NET with theGTK# language-binding for theGTK widget toolkit, but this binding has not been maintained for many years.^[48]

.NET supports use ofNuGet packages. Unlike.NET Framework, which is serviced usingWindows Update, .NET used to rely on itspackage manager to receive updates.^[46] Since December 2020, however, .NET updates started being delivered via Windows Update as well.^[49]

NuGet serves as the primary distribution mechanism for libraries and tools in the .NET ecosystem, including third-party components that extend core functionality. Among these are ADO.NET-compatibledata providers, which offer database connectivity for systems beyond the default SQL Server support. These providers enable direct access to databases such as Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others, and are commonly used in applications that require cross-platform data access, integration with ORM technologies, or support for specific database features.

The two main components of .NET are CoreCLR and CoreFX, which are comparable to theCommon Language Runtime (CLR) and theFramework Class Library (FCL) of the.NET Framework'sCommon Language Infrastructure (CLI) implementation.^[50]

As an implementation of CLI'sVirtual Execution System (VES), CoreCLR is a completeruntime andvirtual machine formanagedexecution of CLI programs and includes ajust-in-time compiler called RyuJIT.^[51][a] .NET Core also contains CoreRT, the .NET Native runtime optimized to be integrated intoAOT compiled nativebinaries.^[53]

As an implementation of CLI'sStandard Libraries,^[54] CoreFX shares a subset of .NET Framework APIs, however, it also comes with its own APIs that are not part of the .NET Framework.^[46] A variant of the .NETlibrary is used forUWP.^[55]

The .NETcommand-line interface offers an execution entry point foroperating systems and provides developer services like compilation and package management.^[56]

.NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI, introduced with .NET 6) is a cross-platform framework for creating native mobile and desktop apps withC# andExtensible Application Markup Language (XAML),^[57] which also supportsAndroid,iOS,macOS,Windows andTizen.

The official community mascot of .NET is the .NET Bot (stylized as "dotnet bot" or "dotnet-bot"). The dotnet bot served as the placeholder developer for the initial check-in of the .NET source code when it was open-sourced.^[58] It has since been used as the official mascot.

• Arif, Hammad; Qureshi, Habib (2020).Adopting .NET 5: Understand modern architectures, migration best practices, and the new features in .NET 5. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1800560567.
• Metzgar, Dustin (2018)..NET Core in Action. Manning Publications.ISBN 978-1617294273.
• Price, Mark J. (2021).C# 10 and .NET 6 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1801077361.
• Price, Mark J. (2020).C# 9 and .NET 5 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1800568105.
• Price, Mark J. (2019).C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1788478120.
• Price, Mark J. (2017).C# 7.1 and .NET Core 2.0 – Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1788398077.
• Price, Mark J. (2017).C# 7 and .NET Core: Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1787129559.
• Price, Mark J. (2016).C# 6 and .NET Core 1.0: Modern Cross-Platform Development. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1785285691.
• Zimarev, Alexey (2019).Hands-On Domain-Driven Design with .NET Core. Packt Publishing.ISBN 978-1788834094.

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of:.NET Development Foundation

Wikiversity has learning resources aboutIntroduction to .NET

• Official website
• .NET onGitHub

• .NET implementations
• Cross-platform software
• Microsoft application programming interfaces
• Microsoft development tools
• Microsoft free software
• Software using the MIT license
• 2016 software

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