SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22 GA is now available
The SSMS team is thrilled to announce the general availability release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22! This has been a busy year for SSMS, to say the least. For the first time in SSMS history, we released two GA versions. Between Previews, minor releases, and major version updates, we shipped SSMS 22 times (yes, we counted!). We want to say thank you to the community for staying patient with us over the past year (it’s hard to believe that just about a year ago SSMS 21 Preview 1 was released), giving us so much feedback to improve the product, and of course adapting to the new look and feel of the SSMS interface! SSMS 22 brings several highly-awaited features, including Windows Arm64 support, GitHub Copilot (preview), SQL Server 2025 (preview) support, several UX improvements, and new SQL database and data warehouse in Fabric integrations.
Download and Install SSMS 22
SSMS 22 can be installed side-by-side with other versions of SSMS.
Like SSMS 21, SSMS 22 uses the Visual Studio Installer. You can customize your installation by adding Workloads, including those such as GitHub Copilot (preview), the Query Hint Recommendations Tool (preview), or the Migration Assistant.
Using the Visual Studio Installer, you can modify your SSMS 22 GA installation to add various workloads and components.
Highlights
The entire list of new features and bug fixes can be found in our release notes, but a few notable mentions include:
- Introduction of Windows Arm64 support
- Introduction of GitHub Copilot (preview)
- UX improvements (zoom results grid, open an execution plan in a new tab, connection dialog updates)
- Introduction of Query Hint Recommendations Tool (preview)
- SQL Server 2025 (preview) updates (supporting JSON/Vector data types, JSON viewer, IntelliSense updates, snippets, scripting, table designer support, edit data support)
- SQL database in Fabric integrations (browse SQL databases in Fabric from connection dialog, OE improvements)
Support policy
With the release of SSMS 22, previous versions of SSMS will no longer receive support, as per our support policy. We strongly recommend upgrading to SSMS 22 to access the latest features, security updates, and critical fixes.
What’s next?
As I mentioned before, this was a historic year for SSMS (perhaps fitting for SSMS’ 20th year). We knew that two GA releases in the same calendar year was going to be ambitious, but as Erin mentioned in her previous blog post, various factors informed our release schedule this year. Now that SSMS 22 is out in the world, we do not expect to have the same release cadence and we’ll spend time to think about what an optimal balance looks like.
Looking ahead, we’re focusing on extending support for SQL Server 2025, continuing to integrate with Fabric SQL experiences, and expanding our efforts related to theming and Arm64 support. We’re also continuing our investment in AI-powered tooling enhancements to improve productivity and make intelligent recommendations more accessible throughout the management workflow. You can read more about our plans on our roadmap.
Let us know what you think
Without our community, SSMS wouldn’t exist! We’d love to hear from you about SSMS 22. If you find a bug or a feature that you’re wishing for, please add an item to our Developer Community site. Filing a bug directly from SSMS by going to Help > Send Feedback > Report a Bug/Suggest a Feature automatically tells us which version you’re using (one less question for us to ask you in our Need More Info requests!).
Thank you for being part of this journey with us. It's been a wild ride, and the future is bright. Enjoy SSMS 22 GA!
Microsoft