Dear Git users,

I hereby announce that Git for Windows 2.56.0-rc1 is available from:

    https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/releases/tag/v2.56.0-rc1.windows.1

Changes since Git for Windows v2.55.0(5) (August 20th 2026)

Following the MSYS2 project, on which Git for Windows is based, Windows 8.1 support was dropped; In doing so, internal paths changed (/mingw64/ bin/git.exe does not exist anymore, /ucrt64/bin/git.exe takes its role; if this breaks your setups, consider switching to /cmd/git.exe instead, which is guaranteed to stay stable).

An issue with the installer for the previous version (v2.55.0.windows.5) caused the "Use external OpenSSH" option to be disabled for some users. This caused the bundled version of OpenSSH to be installed and overwrote any previously-saved choice of external OpenSSH. If you rely on an external OpenSSH installation, and you updated to v2.55.0(5), you should consider re-running the latest installer with "Only show new options" unchecked so that you can re-enable the external OpenSSH option. The bundled version of OpenSSH will be uninstalled automatically. If you do not rely on an external OpenSSH installation, or you did not install v2.55.0(5) specifically, you can safely ignore this notice.

New Features

  * Comes with Git v2.56.0-rc1.
  * Comes with Git LFS v3.8.0.
  * Comes with cURL v8.22.0.
  * Comes with OpenSSL v3.5.8.

Bug Fixes

  * The installer is now actually a 64-bit one, which fixes the problem
    that the external OpenSSH option was broken in Git for Windows
    v2.55.0(5) (see notice above).
  * It is now finally possible to commit 4GB objects or larger in Git
    for Windows.
  * Fixes a bug where parallel checkouts could abort with "* stack
    smashing detected *: terminated".
  * A bug introduced in Git for Windows v2.55.0(5), which caused vim to
    often open existing files with the first line missing, was fixed.

Git-2.56.0-rc1-64-bit.exe | ad9c15eb23b1a0db8e72f1ed31ed22b0494eb9a31843c406dc2cf04f62b1a6eb Git-2.56.0-rc1-arm64.exe | 11e2d03f1585bce60f9f1475eaa3462d04d569baf03dcb6875904e5a127a0e0d PortableGit-2.56.0-rc1-64-bit.7z.exe | 678013e835ae8d649694c18ff9277668150a00dcea9e2481f49a276bb2055990 PortableGit-2.56.0-rc1-arm64.7z.exe | a98c742cceed0928dd6041ae68124c8d517ef22757c5cd2e702406dc6366456b MinGit-2.56.0-rc1-64-bit.zip | 1568396d71947c9b6c22da09f9cd91bdf9590de8d67d93a33167f81c8331a8b9 MinGit-2.56.0-rc1-arm64.zip | b3169c638e45f90d9c594b06ed10e3f3320e182997cb6dc2a4d48fb7bcf595e4 MinGit-2.56.0-rc1-32-bit.zip | be965e3f648ba34788f0a73502f879b51dd3811c3fc8ed55f57c56c789620a96 MinGit-2.56.0-rc1-busybox-64-bit.zip | f38dd4f6e31963395fa0bf085fc5bc45e7f0b24b62bc5ce2ef5c0fbc9b739d82 MinGit-2.56.0-rc1-busybox-arm64.zip | aeecb7d9bf849a0b84f3d02bc9912aa1f70e714b119f5c0c2f4533c05cfcafbe MinGit-2.56.0-rc1-busybox-32-bit.zip | 4b350d657e3b7ba20dde892e1bf5d5247247c52f67543454e5d132adb032d83a Git-2.56.0-rc1-64-bit.tar.bz2 | 2b5b4b74e6e1f006d38241df5d4ea0fe89bc8836baa006dfebf87eb5eac0fed1 Git-2.56.0-rc1-arm64.tar.bz2 | 7c454454fbfc4472bd8bbbe4d2da402a243f4543e64f774671f510f071c65281

Ciao, Johannes