A new Windows runner image with Visual Studio 2026 is now available in public preview. This dedicated image runs alongside the current windows-2025 image, providing a safe validation path ahead of the default Windows image migration. Visual Studio 2026 will be integrated into the windows-2025 image when it reaches general availability on May 4, 2026.

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-02-05-github-actions-early-february-2026-updates/#windows-server-2025-with-visual-studio-2026-image-now-available-for-github-hosted-runners

Our current window CI will begin to error from 2026-05-04, as CUDA 13.2 is the first CUDA compatible with visual studio 2026.

We need to:

• Use windows-2022 for all current CI (12.4, 12.9, 13.0)
  • This could be done now - CI: Downgrade windows-2025 to windows-2022 for Visual Studio 17 2022 #1373
• Use windows-2025 for CUDA >= 13.2 CI (which is not currently implemented, see CI: CUDA 13.1 & 13.2 #1364)
  • We can use windows-2025-vs2026 to test this, but should probably do this in a PR that only gets merged once the test image becomes windows-2025

When windows-2022 is (inevitably) dropped we will have issues producing windows wheels on CI. Hopefully that won't be for a while (based on windows-2019 going EoL 2025-06-30)...