Business Central is transitioning to .NET 10

 

The short version

Microsoft is moving supported Business Central releases from .NET 8 to .NET 10, online and on-premises.

If you are online, Microsoft does this for you

For Business Central online, the transition is handled under the hood. Microsoft migrates the environment during its configured maintenance window, so the only lever you really have is making sure that window sits somewhere sensible for your business.

On-premises: the CU decides the runtime, not the major version

This is the part I would put on a sticky note. For on-prem, .NET 10 arrives through cumulative updates to supported releases. BC 27 picks it up at CU 27.12. BC 28 picks it up at CU 28.6. Both of those shipped in October 2026. BC 29 is on .NET 10 from release.

28.5 and 28.6 want different things.

BC release	CU	Runtime	AL / VS Code extension
BC 27	27.12	.NET 10	16.10.x
BC 27	27.11 and earlier	.NET 8	16.4.x
BC 28	28.6	.NET 10	17.10.x
BC 28	28.5 and earlier	.NET 8	17.0.x
BC 29	Release	.NET 10	18.1.x

 

What changes on your dev machine

The AL Language extension needs .NET 10 too, and Microsoft changed how it gets it. Starting with 2026 release wave 2, the extension uses the .NET Install Tool for Visual Studio Code to acquire the .NET 10.0 runtime. VS Code downloads and installs it automatically when the extension starts. On a normal laptop with open internet, you will not notice.

Extensions and .NET interop: who actually has exposure

If you are cloud only and your extensions are pure AL, you have no exposure. DotNet interop has not been available for cloud extensions for years, which is exactly why this change is a non-event for most AppSource and per-tenant code.

The people who should look harder:

• On-prem solutions that still carry DotNet declarations against custom or third party assemblies. Those assemblies were built against a target framework. Confirm they load under .NET 10 before you apply 27.12 or 28.6.

Expense Agent just got half as expensive, and you can now try it for free

 

If you skipped Directions EMEA, you missed the most practical Expense Agent news since it went into preview: the per-expense cost is being cut in half, and a free trial is coming so you can evaluate the agent without opening a billing conversation first.

What changed

Two things, both landing with version 29.1.

The first is pricing. Expense Agent currently consumes 50 Copilot Credits per receipt processed, flat, no matter how many lines come out of it. That drops to 25. At the pay-as-you-go rate of $0.01 per credit, you go from roughly $0.50 per receipt to $0.25.

For a company putting 250 receipts a month through the agent, that’s 12,500 credits down to 6,250. About $125 a month becomes about $62.50.

The second is a trial: 50 expenses free per environment. Same shape as the Payables Agent trial Microsoft shipped recently with its 50 free invoice uploads. You get to run the full workflow, extraction through categorization through expense report creation, on real receipts.

Why now matters

Expense Agent goes GA in December. Right now it’s in preview worldwide, which means the gap between today and GA is the cheapest time you’ll ever have to form an opinion about it.