MonoGame

Origins in XNA (2004–2010)

Microsoft announced XNA, a set of tools and a managed runtime for game development, at the Game Developers Conference in March 2004, with a public preview of the toolset following in 2006. XNA became a popular platform for small and independent Windows and Xbox 360 developers and was used to create games such as Bastion and Terraria, but Microsoft never extended official support to mobile devices. This gap led to independent porting efforts: in 2009, Bill Reiss released SilverSprite, an open-source 2D framework for Windows Phone inspired by XNA, and José Antonio Leal de Farias combined code from SilverSprite and the community project Mono.XNA to create XNA Touch, a port of XNA aimed at the iPhone, released in December 2009. Several games built with XNA Touch reached the Apple App Store in 2010.

Formation of MonoGame (2011–2013)

In 2011, XNA Touch was renamed MonoGame and moved to GitHub, adding support for Android, Mac, Linux and OpenGL on Windows; Dominique Louis took over as the project's full-time lead. MonoGame 2.0, the first official release, followed in October 2011 with a downloadable version 0.7 that had been available from CodePlex. These early versions supported only 2D sprite-based games; the last purely 2D release was version 2.5.1 in June 2012. Support for DirectX 11, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 was added later in 2012, the same year the MonoGame team was invited to present at Microsoft's Build conference.

In February 2013, Microsoft confirmed that it had no plans to release further versions of XNA, effectively ending official development of the toolkit that MonoGame reimplemented. MonoGame's Dominique Louis said the decision left thousands of XNA developers without an official path forward, and the project pledged to continue supporting them. Ouya console support was added to MonoGame in January 2013, and MonoGame 3.0 followed later that month, introducing 3D rendering support for the first time. Over the following months, the team extended the framework further beyond a strict XNA 4 reimplementation, adding features such as RenderTarget3D, support for multiple GameWindows, and a new cross-platform command line content building tool.

3D expansion and console support (2014–2022)

The first MonoGame titles on PlayStation 4 — TowerFall Ascension, Transistor and Mercenary Kings — were released in 2014, the year Tom Spilman and Steve Williams took over stewardship of the project and official PlayStation 4 developer access opened to all Sony-registered studios. Support for further consoles followed: MonoGame for PlayStation Vita was made available to Sony developers in July 2016 and MonoGame for Nintendo Switch to Nintendo developers in July 2017. MonoGame 3.7 was released in September 2018 and MonoGame 3.8 in August 2020, and PlayStation 5 support followed in July 2022 alongside MonoGame 3.8.1.

Nonprofit foundation and recent development (2023–present)

In September 2023, in the wake of the controversy over Unity's policy changes, the MonoGame team announced plans to move the project's assets into a new non-profit foundation to secure its long-term governance and funding, with the stated aim of keeping the framework open source and free to use in every scenario, including on consoles. The resulting MonoGame Foundation was formed on September 29, 2023, and was recognized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, retroactive to its founding, in October 2024.

MonoGame 3.8.2, released in August 2024 as the first release under the Foundation, moved the framework and its content tool to .NET 8 and dropped support for the Universal Windows Platform. Versions 3.8.3 and 3.8.4 followed in April and June 2025. Public previews of 3.8.5 began in late 2025, and the full release arrived on July 15, 2026. It introduced a new native backend (a single C/C++ library supplying platform-specific implementations, reducing the framework's dependence on third-party C# wrapper libraries such as OpenTK and SharpDX), two new targets, DesktopVK (using Vulkan) and WindowsDX12 (using Direct3D 12), a new code-based Content Builder, and development and runtime packages for ARM64 systems, including low-powered hardware such as the Raspberry Pi. A bug-fix release, 3.8.5.1, followed on August 14, 2026.

In July 2026, the Foundation announced the MonoGame Hub, a tool for creating and managing MonoGame projects from official templates, with early access initially limited to donors at or above a set contribution tier. MonoGame continues to be used by indie developers for cross-platform 2D and 3D games, including recent releases on Steam and modern consoles.

The project's published roadmap schedules 3.8.6 for the third quarter of 2026, focused on stabilizing the new desktop targets and modernizing the storage API; 3.8.7 for the fourth quarter, adding a new shader system and a native web platform and bringing the Hub to public release; and 3.8.8 for the first quarter of 2027, adding a new font system and native video support. A later 4.x series is described as the last to enforce the original XNA APIs, with a 5.x series intended to move beyond them.

Release history

The Foundation's history timeline lists the following MonoGame releases.

Programming model

MonoGame follows XNA in taking a code-first approach. It supplies building blocks for games, game engines and development tools, but includes no built-in editor or visual interface, leaving developers to assemble their own working environment. The framework and its documentation use C#, but because MonoGame is a .NET library it can also be used from other .NET languages, including F# and Visual Basic; the documentation notes that community support for these languages may be limited. Games can be developed in editors including Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code and JetBrains Rider.

The framework's libraries cover graphics, input, audio, content processing and mathematics. Graphics support includes sprite batching for 2D games, 3D rendering and shaders; input handling covers keyboards, mice, gamepads and touchscreens; the audio system plays sound effects and music; and a math library provides common mathematical operations for games.

Content pipeline

Content management and distribution follow the ContentManager model inherited from XNA 4, letting developers build and package game assets, such as textures, models, and audio, for their target platforms. Assets are listed in a content project (a .mgcb file), which can be edited in the graphical MGCB Editor and compiled by the MonoGame Content Builder (MGCB) command-line tool into binary .xnb files that the game loads at run time. Built-in importers and processors handle common file types, and developers can write custom ones as they could in XNA; the editor can also import existing XNA content projects. Shaders written in a supported shader language (HLSL or GLSL) are preprocessed into a common effect format used by MonoGame.

The 3.8.5 release introduced a new Content Builder, in which a game's assets are built by a C# project maintained alongside the game rather than described in a data file; it is intended to replace the separate MGCB tool and MGCB Editor.

Platform support

MonoGame's public repository covers desktop and mobile platforms, while the code that supports console platforms is held in private repositories that are available only to authorized console developers. A developer first joins the platform holder's program, such as Nintendo's developer program, the PlayStation Partners program or Microsoft's ID@Xbox program, and then requests access to the MonoGame console repositories through it. The Foundation cannot grant access without the platform holder's approval because of the non-disclosure requirements that each holder imposes.

Video games

MonoGame was originally created to bring XNA-style development to platforms Microsoft did not officially support, and it has since been used as the underlying framework for numerous independently developed games, first in 2D and later in 3D. Notable titles built with MonoGame include Bastion, Fez, Celeste, Stardew Valley, Terraria and Streets of Rage 4. A more complete, community-maintained list of games known to use the framework follows:

Education and other uses

Because MonoGame provides low-level building blocks rather than a visual editor or built-in scripting language, it has also been adopted in academic and hobbyist settings to teach fundamental game-programming concepts such as the game loop, sprite batching, and content pipelines. Instructional books such as Game Development with MonoGame (Apress, 2022) and long-running tutorial series from independent game-development sites have used the framework to teach 2D and 3D game programming in C#. The Foundation also publishes starter kits, including a 2D platformer, a 3D platformer and a 3D city builder.