Broadcom Shifts VMware Workstation/Fusion to Year-Based Versioning with New 25H2 Release

Broadcom has announced a shift in the versioning approach for VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro, moving away from traditional numeric identifiers such as 17.6.x to a year-based scheme similar to Microsoft. The newly released version is labelled 25H2, signalling an update planned for the second half of 2025, with no clear long-term roadmap disclosed about whether a 26H1 update will follow in the first half of 2026.

The 25H2 release introduces dictTool, a command-line utility for inspecting and editing .vmx configuration files, alongside improvements such as USB 3.2 support and the ability to detect Hyper-V virtual machines for better interoperability. The update also includes several fixes, including enhanced accessibility, UI and Windows-related resizing issues, and improved Linux package installation troubleshooting. Notably, the vctl command-line tool is no longer included with VMware Workstation Pro.