GitHub Actions Windows runners move to VS 2026; arm64 flips Sept 21
The arm64 runner image now ships VS 2026 and defaults Sept 21 — the swap breaks node-gyp, CMake and the Win10 SDK unless you pin. Plus Codex snapshots.
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The VS 2026 image is live — arm64 flips Sept 21
GitHub shipped windows-11-vs2026-arm (Visual Studio 2026) to standard and larger hosted runners on Aug 20. Starting Sept 21, the plain windows-11-arm label begins defaulting to VS 2026, completing by Sept 30 — a breaking change for anything still pinned to VS 2022.
What silently breaks
The same VS 2026 swap already bit windows-latest: node-gyp below 12.1.0 can't detect VS 2026, so native installs like bcrypt, canvas and sqlite3 fail. CMake scripts pinned to the 'Visual Studio 17 2022' generator choke on 'Visual Studio 18 2026', and VS 2026 v18.3.1+ dropped the Windows 10 SDK from the image.
The one-line safety net
Pin runs-on: windows-2022 to hold VS 2022 (roughly three years of support left), or validate on the windows-2025-vs2026 label before you flip. On Node, bump node-gyp to 12.1.0+ or npm to 11.6.3+ so native builds find the new toolchain.
Elsewhere: OpenAI adds shareable Codex snapshots
OpenAI's Aug 20 update lets you capture a read-only snapshot of a Codex chat and share it — a way to hand off a debugging session or agent run for review without granting edit access or exposing your workspace.
Elsewhere: CodeQL 2.26.3 breaks custom query imports
GitHub's Aug 19 CodeQL update sharpens JavaScript/TypeScript and Actions-workflow analysis and adds Vue Composition API flow models — but it removes the SelfHostedQuery module, so any custom query importing it stops compiling until you update.