 <p>Put the DNX version inside the global.json file which lives on the root directory of your solution (like <a href="https://github.com/aspnet/Home/blob/239906e943b576d4ffd80bdaf855376aef737c63/samples/1.0.0-beta4/global.json" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>). </p> <pre><code>{ "sdk": { "version": "1.0.0-beta4" } } </code></pre> <p>You may need to restart the Visual Studio.</p> <p>The other way is to configure this through project properties dialog inside Visual Studio:</p> <p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/N4SvwCe.png" alt=""></p>