Visual Studio 2026 will stop working if you don’t keep it up to date

I have one development machine I use seldomly. That's useful precisely because it doesn't have the latest updates, allowing me to compare what was, and what it became. And, this of course includes Visual Studio with all its updates, but generalizes to pretty much any software these days. The zeitgeist being: everything just updates, because it's "better" for you. But who's better that is, really?

Today, I was a bit surprised to see this screen in Visual Studio 2026:

Essentially, it says: "update or I won't start later". For a developer tool, that's fine; I'd keep it up to date nonetheless... eventually.

Something to watch out for.