Microsoft Build (often stylised as ) is an annual

conference A conference is a meeting, often lasting a few days, which is organized on a particular subject, or to bring together people who have a common interest. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always d ...

event held by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, aimed at

software engineers Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

and

web developer A web developer is a programmer who develops World Wide Web applications using a client–server model. The applications typically use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the client, and any general-purpose programming language in the server. is used ...

s using

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a successor for Microsoft's previous developer events, the

Professional Developers Conference Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was a series of conferences for software developers; the conference was held infrequently to coincide with beta releases of the Microsoft Windows, Windows operating system, and showcased topic ...

(an infrequent event which covered development of software for the Windows operating system) and MIX (which covered

web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, ...

centering on Microsoft technology such as Silverlight and

ASP.net ASP.NET is a server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name stands for Ac ...

). The attendee price was (US)$2,195 in 2016, up from $2,095 in 2015. It sold out quickly, within one minute of the registration site opening in 2016.

Format

The event has been held at a large

convention center A convention center (American and British English spelling differences, American English; or conference centre in British English) is a large building that is designed to hold a Convention (meeting), convention, where individuals and groups ...

, or purpose-built meeting space on the Microsoft Campus. The Keynote on the first day has been led by the Microsoft CEO addressing the press and developers. It has been the place to announce the general technology milestones for developers. There are breakout sessions conducted by engineers and program managers, most often Microsoft employees representing their particular initiatives. The keynote on the second day often includes deeper dives into technology. Thousands of developers and technologists from all over the world attend.

Events

2011

Build 2011 was held from September 13 to September 16, 2011 in

Anaheim, California Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, part of the Greater Los Angeles area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orang ...

. The conference heavily focused on

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the ninth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows ...

and Visual Studio 2012; their Developer Preview versions were also released during the conference. Attendees also received a

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

tablet shipping with the Windows 8 "Developer Preview" build.

2012

Held on Microsoft's campus in Redmond from October 30 to November 2, 2012, the 2012 edition of Build focused on the recently released Windows 8, along with Windows Azure and

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft, released on October 29, 2012. It runs on the Windows NT kernel and is the successor to Windows Phone 7. It was the first ...

. Attendees received a Surface RT tablet with Touch Cover, a Nokia Lumia 920 smartphone, and 100GB of free SkyDrive storage.

2013

Build 2013 was held from June 26 to June 28, 2013 at the

Moscone Center The George R. Moscone Convention Center (), popularly known as the Moscone Center, is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California, United States. The complex consists of three main halls spread out across three bl ...

(North and South) in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The conference was primarily used to unveil the Windows 8.1 update for Windows 8. Each attendee received a Surface Pro, Acer Iconia W3 (the first 8-inch Windows 8 tablet) with a Bluetooth keyboard, one year of

Adobe Creative Cloud Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe Inc., Adobe that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applicat ...

and 100GB of free SkyDrive storage.

2014

Build 2014 was held at the

(West) in

from April 2 to April 4, 2014. Build attendees received a free

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

and a $500

Microsoft Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

gift card. Highlights: *

Windows Display Driver Model Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM, initially LDDM as Longhorn Display Driver Model and then WVDDM in times of Windows Vista) is the graphic driver architecture for video card device driver, drivers running Microsoft Windows versions beginning with ...

2.0 and DirectX 12 *

Microsoft Cortana Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Microsoft Bing, Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and question answering, answering questions for users. Cortana was available in English language, ...

* Windows Phone 8.1 * Windows 8.1 Spring Update
Windows free on all devices with a screen size of 9" or less and on IoT
*

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

Knowledge widget and app linking *

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

Native
AnnouncementProduct Page
* .NET Compiler Platform (Roslyn) * Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC * Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 RTM *

TypeScript TypeScript (abbreviated as TS) is a high-level programming language that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications and transpiles to JavaScript. It is developed by Micr ...

1.0 * .NET Foundation

2015

Build 2015 was held at the

(West) in

from April 29 to May 1, 2015. Registration fee is $2095, and opened at 9:00am PST on Thursday, January 22 and "sold out" in under an hour with an unspecified number of attendees. Build attendees received a free HP Spectre x360 ultrabook. Highlights: *

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

* Windows 10 Mobile * HoloLens and Windows Holographic * Windows Server 2016 *

Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the relat ...

2016 * Visual Studio 2015 *

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...

2016

Build 2016 was held at the

from March 30 to April 1, 2016. The price was $2195, an increase of $100 compared to the previous year. The conference was sold out in 1 minute. Unlike previous years, there were no hardware gifts for attendees. Highlights: * Windows Subsystem for Linux * Cortana chatbot on

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

* "Power of the Pen and the PC" *

Standard Library * ASP.NET Core *

Browser extension A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and st ...

support for Edge * Windows 10 Anniversary Update * Xamarin ** Free for individuals, open source projects, academic research, education, and small professional teams. ** Remoted

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

Simulator for Windows

2017

The 2017 Build conference took place at the Washington State Convention Center in Downtown

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

from May 10 to May 12, 2017. It had been at Moscone Center for the previous four years. However, Moscone center was undergoing renovations from April through August 2017. The Seattle location brought the conference close to the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The price remained at $2195 for the 2017 conference. There were no devices given away at this conference to attendees. Highlights: * Azure Cosmos DB * Visual Studio for Mac * WSL: Fedora and SUSE support * Xamarin Live Player * Windows 10 Fall Creators Update * Microsoft Fluent Design System

2018

The 2018 Build conference took place at the Washington State Convention Center in Downtown

May 7 to May 9, 2018. The price has increased $300 to $2495 for the 2018 conference. The conference was preceded by the Windows Developer Awards 2018 ceremony. Highlights: * .NET ** .NET Core 3 ** ML.NET * Azure ** Azure CDN ** Azure Confidential Computing ** Azure Database Migration Service ** Azure Maps *

Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and Cloud computing, cloud-based Software as a service, services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, One ...

* Microsoft Store: increased developer revenue share (95%; Non-Game App via deeplink only) * Visual Studio ** App Center ** IntelliCode ** Live Share * Windows 10 Redstone 5 ** Cloud Clipboard ** Microsoft Notepad: Unix/Linux EOL support * Xamarin ** Hyper-V Android Emulator ** Automatic iOS Device Provisioning ** Xamarin.Essentials ** Xamarin.Forms 3.0

2019

The 2019 Build conference took place at the Washington State Convention Center in Downtown

from May 6 to May 8, 2019 plus optional post-event learning activities on next two days. The price decreased $100 to $2395 for the 2019 conference. Registration started on February 27. Highlights: * .NET 5: next multi-platform .NET Core * Azure: Azure SQL Database Edge * Fluid Framework * Visual Studio: IntelliCode * Visual Studio Code: Remote Development Extension Pack * Visual Studio Online * Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 * Windows Terminal: cmd.exe,

PowerShell PowerShell is a shell program developed by Microsoft for task automation and configuration management. As is typical for a shell, it provides a command-line interpreter for interactive use and a script interpreter for automation via a langu ...

, and WSL in tabs

2020

Microsoft announced the dates for Build, and their other large conferences on September 16, 2019, with pricing set at $2395. The physical 2020 Build conference, scheduled to take place in downtown

from May 19 to May 21, 2020, was initially cancelled due to the

coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. On April 20, 2020, Microsoft opened sign-ups for a replacement, virtual event, held the same date as the originally intended physical event; the virtual event was free of charge. Highlights: * .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) (preview) * Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) ** GPU support (for

CUDA In computing, CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a proprietary parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for accelerated gene ...

and DirectML) * Windows Package Manager (winget) (preview)

2021

The 2021 conference, once again a free-of-charge virtual event, was held on May 25 to 27, 2021. Highlights: * .NET 6 * Azure ** Azure AI Services ** Azure Bot Service ** Azure Metrics Advisor ** Azure Video Analyzer ** Azure Cognitive Services * Power Fx * PyTorch Enterprise on Microsoft Azure * Microsoft Build of OpenJDK * Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI (WSLg) * Windows Package Manager 1.0 (winget)

2022

The 2022 conference, once again a free-of-charge virtual event, was held on May 24 to 26, 2022. Highlights: * .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) (general availability) * TypeScript 4.7

2023

The 2023 conference was announced on March 14, 2023. A free online part was held from May 23 to 24, and an in-person part was held in Seattle from May 23 to 25 with workshops on May 22. Tickets for the in-person event are $1525 and workshops are $225. Microsoft Build 2023 focused heavily on artificial intelligence and its integration across Microsoft's products and services. * Microsoft introduced its AI chatbot,

Copilot In aviation, the first officer (FO), also called co-pilot, is a Aircraft pilot, pilot in addition to the Pilot in command, captain, who is the legal commander. In the event of incapacitation of the captain, the first officer will assume command ...

, to Windows 11. Copilot is already integrated into Edge, Office apps, and GitHub. It will be available from June, offering users a range of assistance, from simple to complex tasks. * Microsoft announced the integration of Bing with

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

ChatGPT ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and released on November 30, 2022. It uses large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4o as well as other Multimodal learning, multimodal models to create human-like re ...

, making Bing the default search engine for ChatGPT. This functionality is first available for ChatGPT Plus users and will be enabled for all free ChatGPT users later. In addition to AI-focused announcements, Microsoft introduced updates to Windows 11, Microsoft 365, Edge, and Teams. The company also expanded its plugin platform in collaboration with OpenAI, allowing developers to submit their AI experiences to the Microsoft Store on Windows.

2024

Highlights: * Copilot+ PC ** Windows Copilot Library * .NET Aspire: cloud-native stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications.

Attendee party venues

*2011: The Grove *2012: Seattle Armory *2013: Pier 48 *2014: AMC Metreon *2015: AMC Metreon *2016: Block Party Yerba Ln *2017: CenturyLink Field *2018: Museum of Pop Culture / Chihuly Garden and Glass *2019: CenturyLink Field *2020: Online *2021: Online *2022: Online *2023: Seattle Convention Center *2024:

Lumen Field Lumen Field is a multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located in the city's SoDo neighborhood, it is the home field for the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL), Seattle Sounders FC of Major League ...

*2025: Lumen Field

References

External links

*
Build Event on MSDN Channel 9

Build Sessions on Microsoft.com

Events on Microsoft Docs

DevBlogs on Microsoft.com
{{Microsoft Microsoft conferences Recurring events established in 2011 2011 establishments in California