PowerShell 7.6: The Road to LTS, February Community Call Announces Major Update
+ Enhancing the Proxy Command & Learning VIM
v7.6.0-rc.1 Release of PowerShell
PowerShell 7.6: The Road to LTS
The PowerShell team just pushed out the first Release Candidate for PowerShell 7.6 (7.6.0-rc.1). If you’ve been following the dev cycle, you know this is a big one because it’s a Long Term Support (LTS) release. The team is clearly in “measure twice, cut once” mode here, they’re prioritizing stability over rushing to a specific date, which is exactly what you want to hear for an LTS version.
What’s under the hood?
The main heavy lifting in this update is a move to the .NET SDK 10.0.102. Beyond that, there’s a lot of “janitorial” work that makes a big difference for reliability:
They’ve updated the
PSResourceGetto v1.2.0-rc3.Fixed some annoying bugs with macOS package identification.
Ironed out issues with how build info is uploaded for different release types.
There is a 30-day evaluation window starting now. If everything stays quiet and no major showstoppers pop up, we’re likely looking at General Availability (GA) around late March or early April.
Looking Ahead: 7.7 and the 2026 Roadmap
Steve Lee and the team shared some interesting bits about what’s coming later this year. A few things caught my eye:
Moving your Profiles: This is a win for anyone dealing with OneDrive lag. They’re working on “Custom Content Locations” so you can finally move your profiles and modules out of the Documents folder if it’s causing you performance headaches.
Better Aliases: They are looking into Bash-style aliases. This would let you bake in default switches (like always having your favorite flags on
ls) without having to write a full function wrapper every time.AI & Security: The team is starting work on a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. The focus here is really on making sure that when we start using AI to help write or run code, it’s doing so within a safe, secure boundary.
Community & Anniversary Vibes
It’s actually been 20 years since the original “Monad” manifest started this whole journey. It’s pretty wild to see how far it’s come.
On the technical side of the ecosystem, the PowerShell Gallery is currently being migrated over to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). It’s a multi-month project, but it should finally fix those sluggish search indexes and scaling issues that have been cropping up lately.
Also, if you’re into infrastructure as code, keep an eye on the new Bicep local extension for DSC. It basically lets you use Bicep to manage local machine state with all the type-safety you’d expect, which is a pretty slick workflow.
If you want to dive into the nitty-gritty, you can check out the full release notes on GitHub.
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases
Scary Microsoft Lawyers – Part 1
Jeffrey Snover has a great blog post about his experience working with Microsoft’s legal team during a high-stakes technology acquisition. He describes a moment of intense “moral clarity” where a lawyer sternly warned the team against insider trading immediately following the successful signing of the deal.
https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/15/scary-microsoft-lawyers-part-1/
Learning PowerShell in 2026 with Tara. The PowerShell Podcast E214
Andrew Pla with PDQ has an interesting video about transitioning from a GUI-centric IT workflow to mastering PowerShell fundamentals like objects, pipelines, and error handling. The conversation explores the importance of community support and a growth mindset in overcoming the initial intimidation of learning automation.
Learning PowerShell in 2026 with Tara. The PowerShell Podcast E214
Using Dev Proxy to Identify Excessive Microsoft Graph Permissions in Your PowerShell Scripts
Brad Wyatt has an interesting article about how to use Microsoft Dev Proxy to audit and refine permissions in your automation scripts. By leveraging the GraphMinimalPermissionsGuidance plugin, you can automatically detect over-privileged service accounts and ensure your PowerShell workflows adhere to the principle of least privilege.
Microsoft Graph 3 - Create and Delete users using PowerShell and Microsoft Graph
JackedProgrammer has a great video about automating user management in Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) by demonstrating how to create and delete accounts using both the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK and direct REST API requests. The tutorial highlights critical steps like configuring the User.ReadWrite.All permission and using the New-MgUser and Remove-MgUser commandlets to streamline administrative workflows.
Microsoft Graph 3 - Create and Delete users using PowerShell and Microsoft Graph
Using the ZLocation PowerShell Module to navigate folders
Harm Veenstra has an interesting blog post on how to use the ZLocation module to intelligently track and quickly jump between frequently used directories in PowerShell. This tool learns your navigation habits to replace long file paths with short, regex-based commands and easy-to-use aliases like “z”.
https://powershellisfun.com/2026/02/13/using-the-zlocation-powershell-module-to-navigate-folders/
Microsoft Entra Agent ID Explained
Leandro Iwase has a 10-minute explainer on the new Microsoft Entra Agent ID feature. If you are working with AI agents and identity, this is a quick primer on how Microsoft is approaching agent identity management in Entra.
Enhancing the Proxy Command
Jeff Hicks has an interesting article about how to extend the functionality of PowerShell proxy functions by re-introducing remoting capabilities to the Get-Service cmdlet. He demonstrates a step-by-step approach to defining custom parameters and dynamically constructing script blocks that utilize the ‘Using’ scope modifier for seamless remote execution.
https://buttondown.com/behind-the-powershell-pipeline/archive/enhancing-the-proxy-command/
Andrew Learns Vim on a Whim with Mason Moser
Andrew Pla has a great video with Mason Moser about getting started with Vim motions to improve coding efficiency and reduce reliance on the mouse. The tutorial covers core concepts like normal vs. insert modes, basic navigation using hjkl, and useful shortcuts like DD for deleting lines and ZZ for centering text.
Upcoming Events
Zero Trust World 2026 - March 4th-6th Rosen Shingle Creek, Orlando, Florida. Zero Trust conference by ThreatLocker.
https://ztw.com/
PowerShell + DevOps Global Summit 2026 April 13-17, 2026 in Bellevue, WA - The premier PowerShell community event returns this spring!
https://www.powershellsummit.org/
PSConfEU 2026 June 1-4, 2026 in Wiesbaden, Germany - Call for speakers is now closed.
https://psconf.eu/