Table of Contents

Install Stride

Beginner

Introduction

If you want to create games using Stride, this guide provides the installation steps you'll need to follow.

If you're interested in building the Stride engine from source or contributing to its development, please visit the Stride GitHub repository for instructions on how to build from source and contribute to the project.

Installation Steps

  1. Download the Stride Installer from the Stride website.

  2. Run the installer by double-clicking the StrideSetup.exe file and follow the on screen instructions until the Stride Launcher is installed.

  3. Open the launcher.

  4. The Stride Launcher prompts you to install the latest version of Stride.

    No version installed

    Click Yes to install the latest version.

  5. (Optional) The Stride Launcher asks if you want to install the Visual Studio integration. Installing it isn't mandatory and it can be done later with the launcher. For more information, visit this section.

    Install Visual Studio integration

    Click Yes to install the integration, or No to skip.

  6. Stride is now installed and ready to use.

    Stride ready to use

Installation Location

The engine and it's editor Game Studio are a NuGet package, which is the packaging format used in C# projects. This means that Stride's installation location is managed by the NuGet package manager and can't be easily changed by the user.

Changing the installation location is possible, but this is outside of the scope of this page.

Stride Extension

Stride has an optional extension that's avaliable for some IDEs.

  • 🟩 What it does: let's you write shaders directly in Visual Studio.
  • 🟥 What it doesn't do: provide C# syntax highlighting for Stride (that works without the extension).

The extension can be installed for Visual Studio via the launcher, by navigating to the Visual Studio extension section. For other IDEs, visit the Stride Extension page.

Image of the "Visual Studio extension" section in the Stride Launcher.

Note

The "Visual Studio 2022: Install" button will also work for Visual Studio 2026.

Troubleshooting

Could not find a compatible version of MSBuild. or Path to dotnet executable is not set.

If you click Start and see one of the above error messages, close the Stride Launcher and restart it. This issue is caused by the Stride Launcher not detecting the .NET SDK installation. Restarting the Stride Launcher should resolve the issue. Alternatively, restart your computer.

Example error: First launch error

Stride still refuses to open

If you are still having issues with getting Stride to run, see Troubleshooting — Stride doesn't run.

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