You can use the Visual Studio 2026 IDE (with all the changes that come with it) and still build with the Visual Studio 2022 build tools that Unreal Engine supports. Open the Visual Studio Installer, select Modify on the Visual Studio 2026 installation, open the “Desktop development with C++” section and ensure “MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.44)” is installed.