Next Productivity Leap: Telerik and Kendo UI 2026 Q1 Release Is Here

With new agentic tools for document processing workflows, improved accessibility in MCP tools and a new set of AI‑ready UI components, the 2026 Q1 release lets you bring intelligence directly into your applications using the same .NET and JavaScript components you already rely on.

The Progress Telerik and Kendo UI 2026 Q1 release continues to bring AI directly into everyday application workflows, moving it more and more into practical, real-world scenarios, including improved accessibility in AI‑generated UIs.

At the same time, this first release of 2026 strengthens the core foundations you rely on, with latest framework support and integrations, enhanced UI customization tools and a growing set of new and improved components that make it easier to design, build and evolve complex applications.

Let the release speak for itself! Here’s a closer look at the key highlights shaping the Telerik and Kendo UI 2026 Q1 release.

AI-Powered Development and Document Workflows

[Preview] Agentic Tools for Telerik Document Processing Libraries (DPL)

Build intelligent document processing workflows with ease. The DPL Agentic Tools let users extract structured data, edit content, convert formats, generate new Excel or PDF files and perform analysis on Excel documents directly inside .NET apps with no separate services required.

DPL Agentic Tools are available with a Telerik or Kendo UI subscription.

Improved Accessibility in Telerik Agentic UI Generator

The Agentic UI Generator now emphasizes the Telerik and Kendo UI component‑specific accessibility implementation details. It helps you apply these patterns consistently across your UI and surfaces relevant accessibility API references for the specific components you’re using.

The Agentic UI Generator is available with a Telerik or Kendo UI subscription.

AI Coding Assistants Improvements

The Telerik UI for Blazor validator tool is now available to help reduce hallucinations and improve overall code reliability. A new icons generation tool for existing and custom icons is also introduced with this release. The Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core/MVC and Blazor assistants are transitioned to native .NET NuGet distributions, making installation and adoption simpler and more enterprise friendly.

AI Coding Assistants are available with a Telerik or Kendo UI subscription.

AI Interface and Smart Components

New AI Smart Paste Component

Reduce manual typing and speed up data entry in your apps. The AI Smart Paste automatically converts unstructured text into structured inputs by mapping content from emails, documents or messages to the right fields with zero extra effort.

Learn more:

• Kendo UI for Angular AI Smart Paste
• KendoReact AI Smart Paste
• Kendo UI for jQuery AI Smart Paste
• Telerik UI for Blazor AI Smart Paste
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core AI Smart Paste
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC AI Smart Paste
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET AJAX AI Smart Paste

New PromptBox Component

Designed for seamless interaction with AI‑powered workflows, the PromptBox component provides a dedicated space where users can craft prompts, send messages and engage naturally with AI language models.

Learn more:

• Kendo UI for Angular PromptBox
• KendoReact PromptBox
• Kendo UI for jQuery PromptBox
• Telerik UI for Blazor PromptBox
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core PromptBox
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC PromptBox

SmartBox: Semantic Search and Prompting in Telerik and Kendo UI DataGrid

An AI-enabled DataGrid feature that combines natural-language prompting, keyword search and semantic search into a single experience, allowing users to query, filter and manipulate grid data using the interaction option that best fits their needs. Users can control the grid through prompts to apply actions such as filtering, sorting, highlighting and grouping.

Semantic Search enhances discovery by understanding intent and context, returning relevant results even when the exact search terms are not present in the data.

Learn more:

• Kendo UI for Angular Grid SmartBox
• KendoReact SmartBox
• Kendo UI for jQuery Grid SmartBox
• Telerik UI for Blazor Grid SmartBox
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core Grid SmartBox
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC Grid SmartBox

Smart Grid: AI Chat Integration Demo

See how integrating the Telerik and Kendo UI AI Chat with the Data Grid delivers a complete, end-to-end AI prompting experience over the grid multi-step flows and contextual interactions driven through the Chat component.

Learn more:

• Kendo UI for Angular Grid AI Chat Integration
• KendoReact Grid AI Chat Integration
• Kendo UI for jQuery Grid AI Chat Integration Demo
• Telerik UI for Blazor Grid AI Chat Integration Demo
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET Core Grid AI Chat Integration Demo
• Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC Grid AI Chat Integration Demo
• Telerik UI for .NET MAUI Grid AI Chat Integration

Telerik UI for Blazor: Microsoft.Extensions.AI Chat Component Integration

With native Microsoft.Extensions.AI integration, the Telerik UI for Blazor Chat now delivers an AI‑ready experience out of the box, automatically sending messages to a configured IChatClient and returning responses through the built‑in AI pipeline.

Richer UI Customization

Performance Updates in Progress ThemeBuilder

The UI customization tool loads and applies changes noticeably faster, so teams can preview, iterate and ship themes with less waiting and fewer interruptions.

Pixel‑Accurate Component Previews

Kendo UI components in ThemeBuilder now match production output, reducing styling surprises so what you design is what users see across variants and interaction states.

Enhanced Customization

Templates have been enhanced to expose more parts, states and variations, giving designers and developers finer control over visual details without custom workarounds.

New Classic Components

New DropDownTree in Telerik UI for Blazor

By combining the familiar structure of a TreeView with the convenience of a dropdown, the new Blazor DropDownTree component offers an intuitive, space‑efficient interface that makes browsing, expanding and selecting nested items effortless.

New Editor in Telerik UI for .NET MAUI

Gain a richer, more flexible text‑input experience designed for scenarios that go beyond a simple entry field. Offering a multiline editor with built‑in scrolling, the new MAUI Editor makes it easy for users to draft longer text, edit content and work comfortably within constrained mobile and desktop layouts.

New Speech-to-Text Button in Desktop Products

Already available in all Telerik and Kendo UI web and mobile libraries, the Speech-to-Text Button is now ready to empower desktop users, too. They can convert speech into text with a single click, making it easy to add voice input to forms, search bars, chat interfaces and other interactive scenarios.

Learn more:

• Telerik UI for WPF Speech-to-Text Button
• Telerik UI for WinForms Speech-to-Text Button

Feature Improvements Beyond AI

Additional DataGrid Enhancements

Alongside the new smart features, this release brings developer‑focused improvements to the traditional DataGrid experience.

Features like CSV export, stacked layout modes and column min/max width constraints in KendoReact give more control over how data is presented and consumed.

The customizable keyboard shortcuts and improved sorting performance make the Telerik UI for Blazor Grid feel faster and easier to tailor to complex scenarios. Data interaction with grouping‑sort behavior allows grouped data to be reordered directly from the UI.

Chat UI Improvements Across the Board

Users can now quickly jump to the most recent messages with a dedicated scroll-to-bottom button. Message delivery is also more transparent with improved status indicators that can display text, icons or both, along with a new failed message state that allows users to easily resend messages with a single click.

Suggestions have also been refined. Clicked items can optionally disappear from the list and can now be inserted into the input for editing before sending.

These enhancements are powered by a more capable input experience, supporting single-line, multiline and auto-expand modes, customizable prefix and suffix content, and built-in actions like speech-to-text and file selection, making the Chat control more flexible, modern and user-friendly.

All these features make the component equally well suited for AI-to-human interactions and traditional human-to-human conversations.

Diagram Interaction Enhancements

You can now add text directly to connections with flexible positioning options, display tooltips on nodes and connections, and benefit from larger grab points that make starting new connections more precise.

Interaction is smoother with resizable connection segments, improved snapping between shapes and connectors, and automatic scrollbars when the canvas exceeds the viewport.

Additional upgrades such as keyboard navigation and resizable shapes contribute to a more polished and accessible diagramming experience.

New in Kendo UI for Angular Spreadsheet, Scheduler and PDFViewer

Angular Scheduler gains more flexible calendar control with options to show or hide days, weekends and other non‑working periods, along with improved slot styling.

The Angular Spreadsheet now enables Excel‑like filtering, sorting with visual indicators and comprehensive copy/paste/cut event handling.

Meanwhile, the Angular PDFViewer introduces support for form filling and blank pages and reuses the modern Toolbar component.

Telerik Reporting and Report Server Updates

With this release, Telerik reporting tools include inline image support in HtmlTextBox, repeat‑on‑every‑page table group headers, improved .NET‑based serialization and full Unicode BiDi text handling for accurate multilingual rendering—all designed to boost performance, readability and global accessibility. Developers also gain access to the downloadable .NET reporting source code, making debugging, customization and exploration easier.

Core Document Processing Enhancements

New MIME type support for embedded files allows developers to explicitly define how attachments like XML, JSON or CSV payloads are represented inside PDFs, while automatic file‑format detection makes it easier to load documents from byte arrays. Compliance is further improved through EU DSS‑aligned digital signing, helping validate PDFs against official European Commission standards. Additionally, Timestamp Server support in PdfStreamSigner enables trusted, verifiable timestamps that support long‑term signature validity.

Modern Framework Support and Integrations

Angular v21 Adoption

Kendo UI for Angular is fully aligned with Angular v21, enabling seamless compatibility with the latest framework updates and giving developers immediate access to improved performance, modern APIs and long‑term platform stability.

.NET 11 Preview 1 Compatibility

Telerik UI libraries and tools are compatible with .NET 11 Preview 1, allowing early adopters to start experimenting with the latest .NET platform updates.

jQuery 4.0.0 Support

After almost a decade, jQuery 4.0.0 has arrived, removing legacy browser support, dropping deprecated APIs, aligning event behavior with modern standards and overall modernizing the codebase. Kendo UI for jQuery is fully compatible and ready for jQuery 4.

JustMock-GitLab integration

JustMock now integrates with GitLab CI/CD, enabling teams to run and automate JustMock‑based unit tests directly within their GitLab pipelines.

What’s New & Release History

To see everything that is new in 2026 Q1, visit the What’s New in Telerik and Kendo UI page. For a deeper dive into each product, follow the links below.