Three months ago, we covered .NET 11 Preview 1 – and the headline was hard to ignore: Android CoreCLR as the default runtime, promising up to 20% faster app startup. It was bold, ambitious, and came with a fair share of "handle with care" warnings. We said it then: brilliant playground, not production territory. Preview 5 is a different story. Released on June 9 2026, this is the last major preview before the Release Candidate. At this point, the .NET team isn't experimenting