Publish using FTP option missing in VS2026 for Blazor app

Hi @Michael Rothberg ,

FTP publishing was removed from Visual Studio 2026. It was not documented, so I had to look into the VS 2026 files to confirm this.

You would need to work around this by manually creating or importing an FTP publish profile.

First, check if your old profile still works. If you still have Visual Studio 2022 installed, look in that project's Properties/PublishProfiles/ folder for your FTP profile file (it ends in .pubxml). Copy it to your new project's Properties/PublishProfiles/ folder. Right-click your project in Visual Studio 2026, select "Publish," then "Import Profile" to load it.

If you need to create a new profile, make a file called FTPProfile.pubxml in your project's Properties/PublishProfiles/ folder and add this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <WebPublishMethod>FTP</WebPublishMethod>
    <PublishProvider>FtpPublish</PublishProvider>
    <LastUsedBuildConfiguration>Release</LastUsedBuildConfiguration>
    <LastUsedPlatform>Any CPU</LastUsedPlatform>
    <SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>http://yoursite.com</SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>
    <LaunchSiteAfterPublish>True</LaunchSiteAfterPublish>
    <ExcludeApp_Data>False</ExcludeApp_Data>
    <publishUrl>ftp://your-ftp-server.com</publishUrl>
    <DeleteExistingFiles>False</DeleteExistingFiles>
    <FtpPassiveMode>True</FtpPassiveMode>
    <FtpSitePath>/wwwroot</FtpSitePath>
    <UserName>your-ftp-username</UserName>
    <_SavePWD>False</_SavePWD>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Replace the placeholder values with your FTP server details. I removed the ProjectGuid line because it's optional and not needed for most cases.

Note about passwords: The <_SavePWD> setting is set to False, which means Visual Studio will ask for your password each time you publish. If you set it to True, your password will be saved in plain text in the file, which is a security risk if anyone gets access to your project files.

The profile should appear in Visual Studio's publish menu once you save the file. If it doesn't show up, you can publish from the command line:

dotnet publish -c Release /p:PublishProfile=FTPProfile

I know this is frustrating since Microsoft didn't announce this change. If you think FTP publishing should be back in the menu, please send feedback through Help → Send Feedback → Report a Problem in Visual Studio.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for confirming. However, my old profile that worked in 2022 does not work in 2026. I can import the pubxml, but when I publish, it just builds (no errors) and does not ftp anything. Same with CLI. I created a new XML using your example, but no change. In VS>Publish, if I go to More Actions > Edit > Connection, there are no controls available in the FTP view. Seems like the capability was fundamentally removed, not just the option in the UI.

I've also tried to use the publish configuration files from VS2022 in VS2026, but with all the different naming and workflows in VS2026, it just doesn't seem to work anymore.

The only workaround I have found so far is to publish the project to a local folder and then use an FTP client to upload the files to the server manually, but this is obviously not ideal.

Sorry, there's no better solution at the moment. I guess we just have to use VS 2022 for FTP publishing.

If possible, please send feedback to Microsoft requesting the feature through Help → Send Feedback → Report a Problem. Hopefully, if enough users request it, they might consider adding it back in a future update.