Avalonia UI

2013

The Initial Commit

At the time Avalonia was called Perspex and Perspex came about from another project that Steven had been working on, which was, rather confusingly, called Avalonia.

View the first commit

2014

Becoming Cross-Platform

Nearly a year after the initial commit, Steven started working on making Perspex cross-platform. The initial cross-platform work was to add a Cairo renderer in addition to the existing Direct2D renderer.

2015

XAML Support

Believe it or not, up to this point Perspex had no XAML support. All UI was defined in C# code (something that has come back into fashion recently).

2016

Perspex Becomes Avalonia

Avalonia was quickly gaining traction and it's community was growing. It was maturing from a personal-project to a viable UI framework. As part of it's maturing, Perspex got a new name, Avalonia.

2017

Version 0.5 released

This release brought significant improvements to the XAML rendering engine, expanded cross-platform support, and introduced early templating and styling capabilities. It marked a key step in refining Avalonia’s data binding and MVVM support, setting the foundation for future development.

2018

A full-time focus

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub in 2018, Steven, the creator of Avalonia, left his role at GitHub and commit full-time to the development of Avalonia. This marked a pivotal moment for the project, allowing for greater focus, faster progress, and a clearer vision for its future. With dedicated time and effort, Avalonia began evolving rapidly, strengthening its foundations as a serious alternative for cross-platform .NET UI development.

2019

Company Formation

In response to growing enterprise interest and increasing requests for formal support agreements, Avalonia UI was officially incorporated in Estonia in 2019. This milestone allowed the project to establish a commercial structure, enabling businesses to adopt Avalonia with confidence while securing professional support and development services. It marked a key step in Avalonia’s transition from an open-source project to a sustainable, business-backed framework.

2020

Version 0.10.0 RC Released

The release of previews of Avalonia 0.10 in 2020 marked a turning point for both the project and the business. With significant improvements to performance, stability, and platform support, Avalonia became a viable choice for production applications. Adoption surged, and the demand for commercial support grew, solidifying Avalonia’s position as a serious contender in the .NET UI space. This release laid the groundwork for the project’s rapid expansion and long-term success.

2021

Explosive Growth Fuels Expansion

Avalonia’s growth skyrocketed in 2021, with revenue surging by an incredible 1,090%. This unprecedented success enabled the full-time engineering team to expand to four, accelerating development and strengthening the framework’s capabilities. With increasing adoption across the industry, Avalonia’s position as a leading .NET UI solution became undeniable.

2022

Porting WPF Begins

With enterprise demand soaring, the team embarked on a technical exploration to bring WPF to macOS and Linux. Recognising the massive number of organisations eager to take their WPF applications cross-platform, this initiative laid the foundation for what would become a groundbreaking solution for modernising legacy .NET applications.

2023

Avalonia v11, New Platforms & Major Milestones

Avalonia v11 was released, marking a new era of maturity for the framework with a revised versioning system. This milestone introduced support for WebAssembly, iOS, and Android, alongside a brand-new compositional renderer. XPF, the long-awaited cross-platform WPF implementation, was also launched. Meanwhile, Mike James left Microsoft to take the helm of the business, and the team expanded to nine, solidifying Avalonia’s role as the go-to UI solution for .NET developers.

2024

Strength, Selectivity, and Success of XPF

The team grew to 11 members, with XPF proving to be a game-changer, now contributing 50% of the company’s revenue. With a strong commercial foundation, Avalonia could afford to be more selective with client projects, ensuring a sharper focus on strategic growth and innovation.

2025

The Future is Bright

Now a 12-strong team and growing, Avalonia stands as the most starred .NET UI framework on GitHub, with double-digit month-on-month growth.

With Avalonia Accelerate in full-development and an unwavering belief in our mission, the future has never looked more exciting.

The vision of a truly cross-platform, modern .NET UI solution is becoming a reality.

2013

The Initial Commit

At the time Avalonia was called Perspex and Perspex came about from another project that Steven had been working on, which was, rather confusingly, called Avalonia.

View the first commit

2014

Becoming Cross-Platform

Nearly a year after the initial commit, Steven started working on making Perspex cross-platform. The initial cross-platform work was to add a Cairo renderer in addition to the existing Direct2D renderer.

2015

XAML Support

Believe it or not, up to this point Perspex had no XAML support. All UI was defined in C# code (something that has come back into fashion recently).

2016

Perspex Becomes Avalonia

Avalonia was quickly gaining traction and it's community was growing. It was maturing from a personal-project to a viable UI framework. As part of it's maturing, Perspex got a new name, Avalonia.

2017

Version 0.5 released

This release brought significant improvements to the XAML rendering engine, expanded cross-platform support, and introduced early templating and styling capabilities. It marked a key step in refining Avalonia’s data binding and MVVM support, setting the foundation for future development.

2018

A full-time focus

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub in 2018, Steven, the creator of Avalonia, left his role at GitHub and commit full-time to the development of Avalonia. This marked a pivotal moment for the project, allowing for greater focus, faster progress, and a clearer vision for its future. With dedicated time and effort, Avalonia began evolving rapidly, strengthening its foundations as a serious alternative for cross-platform .NET UI development.

2019

Company Formation

In response to growing enterprise interest and increasing requests for formal support agreements, Avalonia UI was officially incorporated in Estonia in 2019. This milestone allowed the project to establish a commercial structure, enabling businesses to adopt Avalonia with confidence while securing professional support and development services. It marked a key step in Avalonia’s transition from an open-source project to a sustainable, business-backed framework.

2020

Version 0.10.0 RC Released

The release of previews of Avalonia 0.10 in 2020 marked a turning point for both the project and the business. With significant improvements to performance, stability, and platform support, Avalonia became a viable choice for production applications. Adoption surged, and the demand for commercial support grew, solidifying Avalonia’s position as a serious contender in the .NET UI space. This release laid the groundwork for the project’s rapid expansion and long-term success.

2021

Explosive Growth Fuels Expansion

Avalonia’s growth skyrocketed in 2021, with revenue surging by an incredible 1,090%. This unprecedented success enabled the full-time engineering team to expand to four, accelerating development and strengthening the framework’s capabilities. With increasing adoption across the industry, Avalonia’s position as a leading .NET UI solution became undeniable.

2022

Porting WPF Begins

With enterprise demand soaring, the team embarked on a technical exploration to bring WPF to macOS and Linux. Recognising the massive number of organisations eager to take their WPF applications cross-platform, this initiative laid the foundation for what would become a groundbreaking solution for modernising legacy .NET applications.

2023

Avalonia v11, New Platforms & Major Milestones

Avalonia v11 was released, marking a new era of maturity for the framework with a revised versioning system. This milestone introduced support for WebAssembly, iOS, and Android, alongside a brand-new compositional renderer. XPF, the long-awaited cross-platform WPF implementation, was also launched. Meanwhile, Mike James left Microsoft to take the helm of the business, and the team expanded to nine, solidifying Avalonia’s role as the go-to UI solution for .NET developers.

2024

Strength, Selectivity, and Success of XPF

The team grew to 11 members, with XPF proving to be a game-changer, now contributing 50% of the company’s revenue. With a strong commercial foundation, Avalonia could afford to be more selective with client projects, ensuring a sharper focus on strategic growth and innovation.

2025

The Future is Bright

Now a 12-strong team and growing, Avalonia stands as the most starred .NET UI framework on GitHub, with double-digit month-on-month growth.

With Avalonia Accelerate in full-development and an unwavering belief in our mission, the future has never looked more exciting.

The vision of a truly cross-platform, modern .NET UI solution is becoming a reality.

2013

The Initial Commit

At the time Avalonia was called Perspex and Perspex came about from another project that Steven had been working on, which was, rather confusingly, called Avalonia.

View the first commit

2014

Becoming Cross-Platform

Nearly a year after the initial commit, Steven started working on making Perspex cross-platform. The initial cross-platform work was to add a Cairo renderer in addition to the existing Direct2D renderer.

2015

XAML Support

Believe it or not, up to this point Perspex had no XAML support. All UI was defined in C# code (something that has come back into fashion recently).

2016

Perspex Becomes Avalonia

Avalonia was quickly gaining traction and it's community was growing. It was maturing from a personal-project to a viable UI framework. As part of it's maturing, Perspex got a new name, Avalonia.

2017

Version 0.5 released

This release brought significant improvements to the XAML rendering engine, expanded cross-platform support, and introduced early templating and styling capabilities. It marked a key step in refining Avalonia’s data binding and MVVM support, setting the foundation for future development.

2018

A full-time focus

Following Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub in 2018, Steven, the creator of Avalonia, left his role at GitHub and commit full-time to the development of Avalonia. This marked a pivotal moment for the project, allowing for greater focus, faster progress, and a clearer vision for its future. With dedicated time and effort, Avalonia began evolving rapidly, strengthening its foundations as a serious alternative for cross-platform .NET UI development.

2019

Company Formation

In response to growing enterprise interest and increasing requests for formal support agreements, Avalonia UI was officially incorporated in Estonia in 2019. This milestone allowed the project to establish a commercial structure, enabling businesses to adopt Avalonia with confidence while securing professional support and development services. It marked a key step in Avalonia’s transition from an open-source project to a sustainable, business-backed framework.

2020

Version 0.10.0 RC Released

The release of previews of Avalonia 0.10 in 2020 marked a turning point for both the project and the business. With significant improvements to performance, stability, and platform support, Avalonia became a viable choice for production applications. Adoption surged, and the demand for commercial support grew, solidifying Avalonia’s position as a serious contender in the .NET UI space. This release laid the groundwork for the project’s rapid expansion and long-term success.

2021

Explosive Growth Fuels Expansion

Avalonia’s growth skyrocketed in 2021, with revenue surging by an incredible 1,090%. This unprecedented success enabled the full-time engineering team to expand to four, accelerating development and strengthening the framework’s capabilities. With increasing adoption across the industry, Avalonia’s position as a leading .NET UI solution became undeniable.

2022

Porting WPF Begins

With enterprise demand soaring, the team embarked on a technical exploration to bring WPF to macOS and Linux. Recognising the massive number of organisations eager to take their WPF applications cross-platform, this initiative laid the foundation for what would become a groundbreaking solution for modernising legacy .NET applications.

2023

Avalonia v11, New Platforms & Major Milestones

Avalonia v11 was released, marking a new era of maturity for the framework with a revised versioning system. This milestone introduced support for WebAssembly, iOS, and Android, alongside a brand-new compositional renderer. XPF, the long-awaited cross-platform WPF implementation, was also launched. Meanwhile, Mike James left Microsoft to take the helm of the business, and the team expanded to nine, solidifying Avalonia’s role as the go-to UI solution for .NET developers.

2024

Strength, Selectivity, and Success of XPF

The team grew to 11 members, with XPF proving to be a game-changer, now contributing 50% of the company’s revenue. With a strong commercial foundation, Avalonia could afford to be more selective with client projects, ensuring a sharper focus on strategic growth and innovation.