GitHub Actions: Early February 2026 updates

Source: GitHub Changelog

GitHub Actions – New Capabilities This Month

GitHub Actions has rolled out several enhancements:

• Custom runner autoscaling – Automatically scale self‑hosted runners up or down based on workload demand.
• Expanded security controls – New security features are now available to all users, giving you finer‑grained permissions and protection for your workflows.
• Early access to updated runner images – Fresh Windows and macOS runner images are available for early adopters, offering the latest OS versions and pre‑installed tools.

GitHub Actions Runner Scale Set Client

The GitHub Actions Runner Scale Set Client is now in public preview. It’s a standalone Go module that lets you build custom autoscaling solutions for GitHub Actions runners without relying on Kubernetes.

What it does

The client supplies the core building blocks for autoscaling on any infrastructure—containers, virtual machines, bare‑metal servers, or cloud services—by interacting directly with GitHub’s scale‑set APIs. GitHub handles orchestration logic; you retain full control over runner lifecycle management.

Key capabilities

• Platform‑agnostic – works with containers, VMs, and bare‑metal on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Full provisioning control – you decide how runners are created, scaled, and destroyed.
• Native multi‑label support – assign multiple labels to a scale set to serve diverse build types.
• Agentic workflow support – compatible with GitHub Copilot coding agents.
• Real‑time telemetry – built‑in metrics for job execution and runner performance.

How it works

The client handles API calls to GitHub’s scale‑set infrastructure while leaving runner provisioning entirely to you. Whether you spin up containers, launch cloud VMs, or provision physical hardware, you benefit from GitHub’s APIs without giving up infrastructure control.

Important – You are responsible for all infrastructure setup, provisioning logic, and scaling strategies. GitHub provides only the APIs and client libraries.

Relationship to Actions Runner Controller

The Runner Scale Set Client is not a replacement for the Actions Runner Controller (ARC), which remains the reference Kubernetes implementation of the scale‑set APIs. The client is an alternative for building custom autoscaling solutions outside of Kubernetes. Multi‑label support will also be added to ARC in version 0.14.0 (expected March 2025); see the related roadmap issue.

Get started

• Source code:
• Documentation:
• Community discussion:

Explore the repository, adapt the client to your infrastructure, and share your feedback!

Allowed actions settings now available for all plan types

Action allowlisting is now available across all GitHub plans, bringing security controls to Free, Team, and Enterprise customers. You can define exactly which actions and reusable workflows run in your repositories to:

• Enforce least‑privilege principles
• Protect against potentially compromised actions
• Maintain consistent policies across the organization

Learn more in the Managing GitHub Actions permissions documentation, which includes step‑by‑step configuration examples and security best practices.

Windows Server 2025 with Visual Studio 2026 image now available for GitHub‑hosted runners

A new Windows runner image with Visual Studio 2026 is now available in public preview. This dedicated image runs alongside the current windows-2025 image, providing a safe validation path ahead of the default Windows image migration. Visual Studio 2026 will be integrated into the windows-2025 image when it reaches general availability on May 4 2026.

• Test against Visual Studio 2026 without disrupting existing pipelines.
• Identify and fix compatibility issues on your own timeline.
• Maintain fallback options (e.g., windows-2022) if needed.
• Plan migrations with full visibility into the upgrade schedule.

How to use the new runner image

Update the runs-on: field in your workflow YAML to:

runs-on: windows-2025-vs2026

Additional resources

For a complete list of available Windows runner images, see the GitHub Actions documentation on hosted runners.

macOS 26 Intel image now available for GitHub‑hosted runners

We’ve released the GitHub Actions macOS 26 Intel runner image in public preview for larger runners, providing the latest macOS and Xcode tooling for Intel‑based workflows.

• How to use it: update the runs-on: value in your workflow YAML to macos-26-large.

For a complete list of pre‑installed software and their versions, see the macOS runner images documentation.