.NET 7 came out in November 2022. Microsoft established an annual release cadence starting with .NET 5, and we're three major releases in now. Three years, three versions. That's a real shift for .NET, and it changes how you should think about your upgrade strategy.
Understanding the cadence
.NET alternates between standard releases (18 months support) and LTS releases (three years). .NET 6 was LTS. .NET 7 is standard. .NET 8 will be LTS. If your enterprise moves slowly on upgrades, the LTS versions are your targets. .NET 6 to .NET 8 is the practical milestone. But if your team stays current with tooling, the annual cadence means you get the latest features and improvements every single year.
Upgrading is actually easy now
The pain of upgrading has dropped with every release. From .NET 6 to .NET 7, the breaking changes are minimal. The upgrade guides are comprehensive. Visual Studio handles the project file changes for you. Most real applications upgrade in a day or less. The old excuse of "we can't upgrade because breaking changes are too risky" doesn't hold up anymore.
The NuGet ecosystem has stabilized
Look at what library maintainers are doing. The pattern has shifted. They're multi-targeting: supporting .NET Standard 2.0, .NET 6, .NET 7 simultaneously. The fragmentation that existed between .NET Framework and .NET Core is gone. Finding a well-maintained, current package for any reasonable use case is easy.
The .NET 8 previews show where this is heading
The .NET 8 previews announced in February point to the direction: better native AOT, Blazor United (composable server and client rendering), significant performance improvements in the GC and JIT. The annual cadence is delivering consistent, predictable improvements. You get performance benefits immediately if you upgrade. Or you can wait and get them in bundles with the LTS releases. Either way, the momentum is real.