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Azure Databricks released these features and improvements in July 2026.
Note
Releases are staged. Your Azure Databricks account might not be updated until a week or more after the initial release date.
Genie Spaces is now Genie Agents
July 8, 2026
Genie Spaces are now called Genie Agents. The name changed across the documentation, but the product's capabilities are unchanged. For more information, see Genie Agents.
Genie products now use pay-as-you-go pricing
July 8, 2026
Starting July 8, 2026 at 00:00 UTC, Genie products, including Genie Agents, Genie Code, and Genie One, are billed following a pay-as-you-go pricing model that includes 150 DBUs of free large language model (LLM) usage every month, equivalent to about $10.50 in the US East region. Usage beyond the free amount is billed in DBUs, reflecting the underlying LLM models and agents that power each Genie session. For more information about pricing, see Azure Databricks pricing.
To monitor and control Genie spend for your account, see Manage budgets and cost controls for Genie.
Automatic cost attribution for materialized views and streaming tables in Databricks SQL
July 8, 2026
Materialized view and streaming table refreshes in Databricks SQL now inherit custom tags from the enclosing SQL warehouse environment. These tags propagate to billing surfaces like system.billing.usage, enabling proper cost attribution of materialized view and streaming table updates back to the source SQL warehouse. See Attribute costs to the SQL warehouse with custom tags.
Object metadata column is now in Public Preview
July 8, 2026
The _object_metadata column is now in Public Preview. The _object_metadata column is a hidden metadata column that exposes object-level properties for objects in cloud storage, including MIME type, ETag, user-defined key-value metadata, system-defined metadata, and object tags. It is available starting from Databricks Runtime 18.1.
REPLACE WHERE flows are now generally available
July 7, 2026
REPLACE WHERE flows for pipelines and standalone streaming tables are now generally available. Use them to replace only rows matching a predicate on each refresh, without reprocessing the full table history. See Batch processing with REPLACE WHERE flows.
Excel file format support is now available by default
July 7, 2026
Excel file format support is now available by default for all workspaces. You can ingest, parse, and query .xls, .xlsx, and .xlsm files directly using built-in support, without external libraries or manual conversions. See Read and stream Excel files.
Managed Iceberg materialized views are in Public Preview
July 7, 2026
You can now create a materialized view that is compatible with external Iceberg readers. This feature is in Public Preview. To enable it, reach out to your Databricks account team. See Create a materialized view compatible with external Iceberg readers.
Budgets are now generally available
July 6, 2026
Budgets, including budgets for Unity AI Gateway, are now generally available.
Budgets let admins define spending thresholds. For requests managed through Unity AI Gateway, including Genie interactions, admins can set additional per-user thresholds and overrides, with configurable actions such as email alerting and usage blocking.
See Create and monitor budgets and Manage budgets for Unity AI Gateway.
Standard performance mode is now supported for materialized view or streaming table refreshes in jobs
July 6, 2026
Materialized view and streaming table refreshes that are orchestrated through a SQL task in a Lakeflow job now respect the job's Performance optimized setting. When the setting is turned off, the refresh uses standard performance mode, which consumes fewer DBUs.
For more about performance modes for scheduled refreshes, see Select a performance mode for scheduled refreshes.
Lakeflow Connect row filtering is now generally available
July 2, 2026
Row filtering in Lakeflow Connect is now generally available. Row filtering allows you to ingest only the rows you need by applying conditions similar to a SQL WHERE clause, improving performance and minimizing data duplication. Row filtering applies during both the initial load and subsequent incremental updates, and is supported for SaaS connectors including Google Analytics, Salesforce, and ServiceNow, as well as all query-based connectors.
MySQL integrated CDC pipeline is now in Beta
July 1, 2026
The integrated CDC pipeline for MySQL is now in Beta. An integrated CDC pipeline ingests change data from MySQL into Azure Databricks using a single pipeline, combining extraction and application into one pipeline update. Unlike the standard gateway-based architecture, an integrated CDC pipeline requires no separate ingestion gateway. See Create an integrated CDC pipeline for MySQL.
Veeva Vault connector (Beta)
July 1, 2026
The Veeva Vault connector is now available in Lakeflow Connect in Beta. Workspace admins can control access to this feature from the Previews page.
The connector uses Veeva's Direct Data API to ingest all standard objects, custom objects, system tables, and audit trail tables from your Vault instance into Azure Databricks. Authentication uses OAuth 2.0 M2M via Microsoft Entra ID.