Locked out of using UE5 because Visual Studio 2022 Community is not available anymore

General Feedback & Requests
1

I did a computer reset (at worse possible time).

Microsoft is not offering Visual Studio 2022 Community for download anymore. Only Visual Studio 2026 is available. And UE5.7 GenerateProjectFiles.bat fails with “Visual Studio 2022 x64 must be installed in order to build this target.”

This effectively means I can not use UE5 with using expensive paid options like Visual Studio 2022 Professional which are still ironically available from Microsoft in old downloads. From what I can tell Visual Studio 2026 can support old build tools and can effectively act as an older version.

Could we please have a priority on supporting VS2026 compatibility for UE5.7?

2
3

The main Microsoft VS Community page only has downloads for 2026 or older 2022 Pro and enterprise. If anyone else can’t find Visual Studio Community 2022, I was pointed to this stackoverflow page.

which lead to Visual Studio 2022 Release History | Microsoft Learn and if you search for Community on that page you’ll find the following link buried in the page.

https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vs_community.exe

Hope this helps.