Visual Studio 18 2026

.. versionadded:: 4.2

Generates Visual Studio 18 (VS 2026) project files.

Project Types ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Only Visual C++ and C# projects may be generated (and Fortran with Intel compiler integration). Other types of projects (JavaScript, Powershell, Python, etc.) are not supported.

Instance Selection ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

VS 2026 supports multiple installations on the same machine. The :variable:CMAKE_GENERATOR_INSTANCE variable may be used to select one.

Platform Selection ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The default target platform name (architecture) is that of the host and is provided in the :variable:CMAKE_VS_PLATFORM_NAME_DEFAULT variable.

The :variable:CMAKE_GENERATOR_PLATFORM variable may be set, perhaps via the :option:cmake -A option, to specify a target platform name (architecture). For example:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A Win32
cmake -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A x64
cmake -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A ARM
cmake -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A ARM64

Toolset Selection ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The v145 toolset that comes with VS 18 2026 is selected by default. The :variable:CMAKE_GENERATOR_TOOLSET option may be set, perhaps via the :option:cmake -T option, to specify another toolset.

.. |VS_TOOLSET_HOST_ARCH_DEFAULT| replace:: By default this generator uses the 64-bit variant on x64 hosts and the 32-bit variant otherwise.

.. include:: include/VS_TOOLSET_HOST_ARCH.rst