As we look ahead to the DevExpress v25.1 release anticipated early June, there is a lot to get excited about across our product line-up. From UI enhancements and performance boosts to serious AI integration and accessibility upgrades, the focus this cycle is clear: smarter, faster, and more inclusive development.
WinForms
WinForms gets a major boost in v25.1 with features that elevate productivity and polish. The Template Kit for .NET 8+ now supports the creation of multiple views or forms in a single go, making app scaffolding much quicker. Accessibility improvements have been made across the board, especially in Report Viewers and Dashboards, ensuring better screen reader and keyboard navigation support.
On the AI front, semantic search lands in the Data Grid, allowing users to query data using natural language. Reporting tools are now more intelligent with automatic localization, natural language to SQL conversion, and AI-powered error suggestions through the Report Design Analyzer. The PDF Viewer also joins the AI party with summarization and translation features to boost document usability.
For a detailed look at what's new for WinForms check out the team blog, if you want to check out some of the features the EAP is now available, details can be found here.
WPF
WPF developers working with .NET 9 will appreciate the new drag-and-drop and clipboard enhancements. With BinaryFormatter deprecated, a new serialization model ensures smooth interaction across apps and platforms. The addition of AI-assisted tools will help reduce boilerplate code and offer layout suggestions, speeding up the dev cycle significantly.
We’re introducing a new Project Upgrader utility tailored for WPF applications. This tool helps modernize legacy projects with fewer headaches, automating common update tasks and ensuring smoother migrations to newer frameworks. There's also a growing investment in cross-platform development, and we're actively exploring support for Avalonia UI, bringing WPF-like experiences to macOS and Linux environments.
Accessibility remains a key focus, with updates to screen reader support and keyboard navigation, making apps more inclusive.
Full details can be found on the WPF team blog and EAP to some of these features is now available, see this blog post for details.
VCL
VCL is taking a big step toward modernization with a new CTP for hybrid reporting that integrates the DevExpress JavaScript Report Designer. This bridges native VCL apps with modern web-based design capabilities via WebView and ASP.NET Core. Performance improvements include better rendering for skinned forms and SVGs, plus easier application-wide skinning. Accessibility updates target commonly used controls like the Data Grid and TreeList, while AI-powered enhancements are being researched for future releases—think smart paste, summarization, and translation. We're also introducing improved state management in data-aware controls, so developers can persist things like node focus, selection, and scroll positions more easily.
These exciting features and more in detail at the VCL Team Blog.
Blazor
Blazor continues to evolve rapidly. We’re retiring legacy components like DxDataGrid and introducing a new .NET Upgrade Assistant plugin to help transition projects smoothly, automatically identifying and resolving breaking changes. The Fluent theme becomes fully production-ready, complete with light/dark modes, custom accents, and scalable icons. We’re reducing payload size by modularizing CSS and exploring the removal of Bootstrap to improve load performance.
Our AI Chat component sees major improvements: file attachments, prompt suggestions, and OpenAI Assistant integration for smarter, context-aware responses. PDF export support arrives for Grid and TreeList, along with new UI elements like the TreeList search box and 'Select All' in List Box. Plus, our new App Showcase demo illustrates how to build slick, modern business apps using Blazor and DevExpress controls.
Full details on the Blazor Team Blog.
DevExtreme
DevExtreme is getting some love with brand-new components and serious quality-of-life improvements. The new CardView control offers a flexible, responsive layout for business data with paging, sorting, and column reordering. The new Stepper component is ideal for guiding users through multi-step workflows.
DataGrid and TreeList get smarter with a new Column Chooser and contextual menus for quicker actions. Accessibility improvements and modernized themes ensure smoother keyboard navigation and screen reader compatibility. Rendering and interaction performance have also been optimized.
AI-powered features are making their way into the platform, with semantic search planned for the Data Grid and future enhancements for contextual filtering and summarization. These capabilities aim to make large datasets more navigable and intuitive.
The Scheduler component is getting updates to better support time zone management, customizable appointment tooltips, and new event handling options, improving the overall user and developer experience.
For maps, DevExtreme is moving away from Bing Maps and introducing support for open-source map providers. This change reduces licensing concerns while providing more flexibility in visualizing geospatial data. New features include better tile management and enhanced marker clustering to support large datasets.
Read the Team Blog for full details.
Document Processing Libraries
This release brings a major milestone: the introduction of a new PowerPoint API. Developers can now generate and manipulate presentation files alongside our existing Word, PDF, and Excel support. The API supports creating slides, inserting images and shapes, and defining transitions—enabling automated generation of polished, professional presentations.
The Word API gains support for structured content controls like checkboxes, dropdowns, and date pickers, allowing for rich, interactive form documents. There's also support for floating tables and improved image manipulation, helping developers design more visually refined documents.
For PDF, support for Optional Content Groups (layers) opens the door to multi-layered, interactive PDFs that can toggle visibility of content—ideal for scenarios like architectural drawings or multilingual documentation. Additionally, improved digital signature handling and the ability to extract images with higher fidelity are part of this release, and we've added the ability for document redaction.
Spreadsheet enhancements now allow sorting and filtering by cell color, support for shared formulas, and new export options for CSV and TXT formats with customizable delimiters. We’ve also added better support for conditional formatting and formula auditing to enhance spreadsheet analysis and validation workflows.
Performance and memory usage across all document APIs have been refined, particularly for server-side operations and large file processing, ensuring smoother integration into enterprise applications.
Together, these updates significantly expand the range and quality of document-based functionality developers can deliver in their apps.
More details available on the Teams Blog.
XAF & Web API
XAF gets a UI refresh with Ribbon and Fluent themes coming to Blazor, plus enhanced accessibility with keyboard shortcut support. The DxGridListEditor is seeing serious upgrades: virtual scrolling, banded layouts, and contextual menus.
Behind the scenes, we’re adding optimistic concurrency for EF Core, a new Clone Object Module, and automated EF migrations to simplify database management. The Template Kit now supports PostgreSQL and MySQL backends, broadening your database options.
Hybrid desktop apps via Electron.NET are also on the horizon, offering native-like UX across Windows, macOS, and Linux. We’re also tightening security with Antiforgery tokens and expanding multi-tenancy support to handle shared data scenarios more gracefully.
The Web API Service gets some long-requested features: support for OData Deep Insert/Update, concurrency control, and batch operations, making it much more robust for integration-heavy apps.
No amount of summarizing could do justice to the updates, it's better you read the Team Blog here.
Reporting & BI Dashboard
DevExpress Reports introduces line spacing control and time zone conversion, letting you display UTC data in the viewer's local context. MongoDB makes its way into the Data Source Wizard, and layout design becomes easier with new "Snap to Grid" behavior.
AI localization and intelligent error suggestions enhance productivity, while accessibility improvements roll out across viewers for all platforms. We’re also working on expanding IDE support with better performance in Visual Studio and exploring Rider integration.
On the BI Dashboard side, DateOnly and TimeOnly support improves filtering and parameter control. Dashboards can now prompt for parameters before loading, and accessibility gets a boost on both WinForms and Web platforms.
The team have detailed the roadmap here and EAP access is available for licensed users, for more information see this blog post.
Whether you’re working in desktop, web, or hybrid environments, DevExpress v25.1 brings powerful tools and thoughtful improvements to help you build more capable, intelligent, and accessible apps faster than ever.