Current behavior

• CONTRIBUTING > Requirements > Windows currently instructs to install the Visual Studio Community 2022 edition. This version is however no longer supported and following the link only allows downloading the 2026 version of the Visual Studio Community edition.

• Visual Studio 2026 was announced on Nov 11, 2025 as generally available. It is now the default version for download on the Microsoft Visual Studio Downloads page.

• According to Visual Studio 2022 Release History:

  The Visual Studio Community edition is only supported on the Current channel using the latest version of Visual Studio.

• Attempting to build Cypress from source on Microsoft Windows, with only the Visual Studio Community 2026 edition installed, results in an error

Unable to detect compiler type

Desired behavior

Contributing instructions for Windows should allow successful building from source with supported and available Visual Studio components.

Test code to reproduce

On Windows 11 25H2, uninstall any Visual Studio Community 2022 edition.

Browse to https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/, select Visual Studio 2026 Community "Free download" and install this version.

Execute:

git clone https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress
cd cypress
nvm install 22.19.0
nvm use 22.19.0
npm install yarn@latest -g
yarn

Cypress Version

15.7.0

Debug Logs

[5/6] Building fresh packages...
[21/34] ⡀ cpu-features
[7/34] ⡀ playwright-webkit
[26/34] ⡀ @packages/frontend-shared
[25/34] ⡀ @packages/socket
warning Error running install script for optional dependency: "C:\\Users\\mikem\\github\\cypress-io\\cypress\\node_modules\\cpu-features: Command failed.
Exit code: 1
Command: node buildcheck.js > buildcheck.gypi && node-gyp rebuild
Arguments:
Directory: C:\\Users\\mikem\\github\\cypress-io\\cypress\\node_modules\\cpu-features
Output:
C:\\Users\\mikem\\github\\cypress-io\\cypress\\node_modules\\buildcheck\\lib\\index.js:133
        throw new Error('Unable to detect compiler type');
        ^

Error: Unable to detect compiler type
    at new BuildEnvironment (C:\\Users\\mikem\\github\\cypress-io\\cypress\\node_modules\\buildcheck\\lib\\index.js:133:15)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\\Users\\mikem\\github\\cypress-io\\cypress\\node_modules\\cpu-features\\buildcheck.js:5:12)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1706:14)
    at Object..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1839:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1441:32)
    at Function._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1263:12)
    at TracingChannel.traceSync (node:diagnostics_channel:322:14)
    at wrapModuleLoad (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:237:24)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:171:5)
[6/6] Cleaning modules...

Other

Updates of several dependencies are necessary to build on Windows using Visual Studio 2026. This includes a requirement of [email protected] which is bundled in [email protected], and as yet unreleased in any Node.js version.

Cypress currently specifies in .node-version the use of Node.js 22.19.0 for building from source. The Node.js 22.x release line bundles npm 10.x.

At this time therefore Cypress cannot build using Visual Studio 2026 and it must stay with Visual Studio 2022.