July 2026

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.

Lakebase Autoscaling update notifications now post 3 days in advance

July 10, 2026

To deliver Postgres version updates, security patches, and new features to your projects sooner, Lakebase Autoscaling has shortened the planned update notification window. Planned updates are now posted at least 3 days in advance, rather than 7. You can check your project's settings for upcoming updates.

See Manage updates.

Databricks SQL alerts are now available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled

July 9, 2026

Databricks SQL alerts now support all compliance security profile standards that Azure Databricks supports, and are available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled.

Use Databricks SQL alerts to monitor data and KPIs by running queries on a schedule, evaluating conditions, and notifying recipients when the conditions are met.

See Databricks SQL alerts.

Restrict access to AI Functions with Unity Catalog permissions (Public Preview)

July 8, 2026

You can now use Unity Catalog permissions to restrict which task-specific AI Functions your organization can access, independent of foundation model access. Contact your account team to enable this feature. See AI Functions Unity Catalog permissions.

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.

See Object metadata column.

Configure serverless egress control in Azure China

July 7, 2026

You can now configure serverless egress control in Azure China (Mooncake) to manage outbound network connections from your serverless compute. Serverless egress control is available only in the China North 3 region, and your workspace must be in China North 3. See What is serverless egress control? and Manage network policies for serverless egress control.

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.

See Select rows to ingest.

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.

See Veeva Vault connector.