September 17, 2026
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Price Increase for CSP Monthly Billing Software Subscriptions
WHEN: October 1, 2026
Effective October 1, 2026, Microsoft will apply a 5% price uplift to annual-term CSP software subscriptions that are billed monthly. The change applies to eligible software subscriptions, including products such as Windows Server, SQL Server, System Center, and Client Access Licenses. This is an alignment with changes that were previously made for cloud subscription licenses on an annual term and monthly billing cycle.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Microsoft Moving to Annual Local Currency Adjustments
WHEN: January 1, 2027
Beginning in Microsoft’s fiscal year 2027 (which starts July 1, 2026), Microsoft has transitioned to an annual local currency pricing update. This will occur every January for its Commercial Cloud services. The next local currency update will be effective January 1, 2027, and occur annually on this date, except in limited exceptional circumstances. Notifications with guidance on the upcoming year’s pricing updates will be issued in advance every November.
Any product-specific price adjustments and/or any consumer price adjustments will continue to be communicated separately.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Power Apps Premium Price Increase
WHEN: January 1, 2027
Microsoft is increasing the price on both Power Apps Premium offers, $2 USD per user, per month, based on annual billing. Power Apps Premium will move from $20 to $22, while the 2,000-seat-minimum offer will move from $12 to $14. Prices shown are USD MSRP.
The new list prices apply to new purchases, renewals, and co-terminations with a term beginning on or after January 1, 2027. Existing subscriptions retain their current price through the end of the current subscription term.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Configuration for the new 100GB Mailbox Entitlement for Microsoft 365 Business Suites
WHEN: July 1, 2026
With the July 1 Microsoft 365 packaging updates, Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium now include an additional 50 GB of primary email storage for eligible users. This brings the supported primary mailbox entitlement from 50 GB to a maximum of 100 GB.
The Business suites provide the total storage through a combination of service plans:
- The Business suite Exchange plan is represented by BPOS_S_STANDARD, which grants 50 GB of storage.
- The additional entitlement is represented by the EXCHANGE_STORAGE_50GB service plan, which adds +50 GB, increasing the total quota to 100 GB.
Both plans must be enabled for the user to have the full 100 GB.
If an administrator has configured a custom mailbox quota, the additional storage logic does not overwrite that setting in order to protect deliberate tenant-level mailbox management choices.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Defender Experts MDR Plan Changes
WHEN: July 15, 2026
Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR has been renamed Microsoft Defender Experts MDR. Plan 1 carries forward the existing service, while the new Plan 2 expands managed detection and response across supported third-party and multi-cloud sources through Microsoft Sentinel. This link has a thorough comparison of the two plans.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Windows Server 2016 Extended Security Updates Now Available for Purchase
WHEN: September 1, 2026
Windows Server 2016 will be end of support on January 12, 2027, but customers can currently purchase Extended Security Updates (ESUs) to prepare if needed. Organizations that connect Windows Server 2016 to Azure Arc can acquire and manage ESU licenses through Azure, with the option to subscribe annually and receive updates only for the servers that require extended coverage.
For Windows Server workloads connected through Azure Arc, Customer must maintain active Software Assurance coverage or equivalent Subscription Licenses corresponding to the underlying licenses for the applicable ESU coverage period.
Please note that Microsoft has introduced a consistent ESU pricing model, so the costs will be the same regardless of deployment location (Azure, on premises) or purchasing channel (EA, CSP, etc.)
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 Extended Security Updates Available in CSP
WHEN: September 1, 2026
The Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 Extended Security Updates (ESU) Year 1–3 offers are now available via the CSP program, as this product will be going end of support on January 12, 2027. ESUs will be available for three years, with coverage until January 8, 2030 if needed. The price for each year offered will be double that of the previous year.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid Now Available
WHEN: September 1, 2026
This new service extends the Azure Virtual Desktop service to session hosts running on existing on-premises infrastructure. The control plane remains in Azure, while organizations can run session hosts on premises in their own datacenter.
Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid licensing includes two components:
- User Access Rights – Eligible Microsoft licenses provide rights to access Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows Server Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts.
- Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid Service Fee – Pay for Azure Virtual Desktop management and orchestration capabilities.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Policy Change for Azure Reservation Exchanges for Services Covered by Savings Plans
WHEN: February 1, 2027
Beginning February 1, 2027, new Azure Reservations for services that are also covered by Azure Savings Plans will no longer be exchangeable. If a service supports Azure savings plans, the corresponding reservation for that service will no longer support exchanges as of February 1, 2027.
This change excludes products or services that are deprecated and approaching end of life, as well as cloud environments that don't currently support savings plans. At the time of the announcement, the change applies to reservations for the following services:
Compute services
- Azure Virtual Machines — including exchanges between non-premium and premium storage
- Azure Dedicated Host
- Azure App Service
Database services
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Azure Database for MySQL
- Azure DocumentDB
- Azure Cosmos DB
- Azure SQL Database
- Azure SQL Managed Instance
Each active reservation for an impacted service, purchased before February 1, 2027, will retain the right to one final exchange after that date. Reservations for impacted services purchased on or after February 1, 2027, will not support exchanges and as savings plan eligibility grows, additional services will automatically fall under this policy.
Instance size flexibility and reservation cancellation policy are not affected by this change.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Disable SMT/HT and Configurable Constrained Cores Functionality Available in Azure
WHEN: August 19, 2026
There are new capabilities in Azure - Disable Simultaneous Multithreading/Hyper-Threading (SMT/HT) and Configurable Constrained Cores - which may help customers right-size their SQL Server, Oracle, and SAP workloads by reducing exposed vCPU counts while retaining larger VM memory and I/O profiles. This can help lower software licensing requirements and simplify compliance, as outlined in the Microsoft announcement.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Microsoft 365 Apps deployment rights expand for Amazon WorkSpaces
WHEN: July 1, 2026
Microsoft has updated the Product Terms to add Microsoft 365 E3, A3, and G3 Unattended Licenses to the list of eligible products for Amazon WorkSpaces deployments. This expands customers’ rights for running Microsoft 365 Apps in Amazon WorkSpaces. You can review the Microsoft Product Terms that cover these deployments here.
WHAT'S HAPPENING: Microsoft Discovery Generally Available
WHEN: August 1, 2026
Microsoft Discovery is now generally available as an AI platform for scientific and engineering research. It coordinates specialized agents and data sources to help research teams create and manage complex agentic workflows.
This service uses Azure resources billed through pay-as-you-go, including a User Message billing unit for agent activity. A complementary desktop Discovery App is in preview and uses GitHub Copilot credits, which requires an eligible GitHub Copilot license.
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