On October 22, 2026, GitHub published the September update of Copilot in Visual Studio. The most visible addition is Bring Your Own Model (BYOM), in preview: teams can use the models they prefer in Copilot, either through GitHub Copilot itself or through their own deployments, even without being signed in to GitHub. Supported providers include Microsoft Foundry, OpenAI, Anthropic and Ollama, and the feature is on by default in the Community, Professional and Enterprise editions.
There is a breaking change for older setups: BYOM now requires the new Agent (Preview). The previous Ask and Agent modes no longer support custom models, and anyone who had Ollama models configured needs to add them again.
For people who look after dependencies, NuGet Audit warnings in the Error List now include a fix action. It opens Copilot Chat in agent mode and uses the NuGet MCP server to update vulnerable packages; you need to be signed in to Copilot and enable that MCP server from the Chat tools menu. Another addition lets you attach a pull request as context from the Git Repository window and get a summary with links to its comments and files, which requires connecting your Git provider's MCP server (GitHub and Azure DevOps are supported).
According to the changelog, the features are available on every Copilot plan, Free included. For .NET teams, the NuGet Audit shortcut is the most immediate win: it turns a warning that usually sits forgotten in the error list into a guided fix.
Original source: GitHub Changelog: GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio — September update