November 2026

Azure Databricks released these features and improvements in November 2026.

Note

Releases are staged. Your Azure Databricks account might not be updated until a week or more after the initial release date.

New jobs compute defaults to Auto access mode

November 9, 2026

When you create new jobs compute in the UI, the access mode now defaults to Auto instead of Dedicated. Auto uses Standard access mode unless a machine learning runtime, a GPU instance type, or a Databricks Runtime version lower than 14.3 is selected. A cluster policy that enforces a different access mode still takes precedence. Existing jobs are not changed.

For workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled, this change takes effect in December 2026. See What's coming.

See Use standard access mode.

Unity Catalog wikis are in Beta

November 6, 2026

Unity Catalog wikis are in Beta. A wiki lets your team document a table's meaning, intended use, and sources, then collaborate on that information. Data owners and stewards draft and publish wikis in Catalog Explorer, manually or with Genie Code, and anyone who can view the table's metadata can comment on, suggest edits to, and react to published wikis. Account admins can control access to this feature from the Previews page.

Restore a deleted Unity Catalog metastore with the REST API (Public Preview)

November 6, 2026

Account admins can now restore a deleted Unity Catalog metastore by its ID. You can restore a metastore for up to 5 days after it's deleted. See Restore a deleted metastore.

Install drivers for JDBC Unity Catalog connections from Maven

November 6, 2026

You can now install the JDBC driver for a JDBC Unity Catalog connection from a Maven coordinate instead of uploading it to a volume. This requires serverless compute, Databricks Runtime 19 or above, or SQL warehouses 2026.43 or above. See Maven coordinates.

Run Claude Code and Codex in the SSH tunnel

November 5, 2026

Claude Code and Codex are now available in SSH tunnel sessions. The agents send model requests through Unity Gateway and authenticate with the credentials of your SSH session. This requires Databricks CLI version 1.23.0 or above. See Run coding agents in an SSH session.

Allow partner platforms in context-based ingress policies

November 5, 2026

Context-based ingress policies can now allow traffic from Power BI, Tableau Cloud, dbt Cloud, and the Genie apps for Slack and Microsoft Teams. Azure Databricks keeps partner details current, so you don't track IPs. See Allow partner platforms in context-based ingress policies.

Metric view listings are generally available in Databricks Marketplace

November 5, 2026

Providers can publish governed business metrics in Databricks Marketplace by adding metric views. Only Azure Databricks recipients can use shared metric views. See Create a Marketplace listing and Add metric views to a share.

FedRAMP High compliance controls now available on Azure Databricks on Azure

November 5, 2026

Azure Databricks is a FedRAMPĀ® Authorized Cloud Service Offering (CSO) at the high impact level in the Azure East US and East US2 (commercial) regions. To process data regulated by FedRAMP High, enable the compliance security profile on your workspace and select the FedRAMP High compliance standard. Serverless compute workloads require base environment version 5 or higher. See FedRAMP High.

External knowledge sources are in Beta

November 5, 2026

External knowledge sources are in Beta. You can pull metadata from Power BI semantic models into Azure Databricks, and Genie can use your Power BI measure definitions when it answers questions. To use external knowledge sources, an account admin turns on External knowledge from the account console Previews page. See Manage account-level previews.

DeepSeek V4 Flash (0731) is retired

November 5, 2026

DeepSeek V4 Flash (0731) is retired as of November 5, 2026. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (1017) is the recommended replacement. See Legacy, deprecated, and retired models for migration guidance.

Upcoming removal of AI Functions support on older runtimes

November 5, 2026

Starting in January 2027, AI Functions in SQL queries will no longer be supported on Databricks Runtime versions below 17.3 LTS. This change doesn't affect ai_similarity or the AI Functions REST API. To continue using AI Functions in SQL, use Databricks Runtime 17.3 LTS and above.

Publish Unity Gateway Skills with a GitHub Action in Beta

November 4, 2026

Publish Git-managed skills to Unity Catalog with a GitHub Action in Beta. Map folders to skills and publish updates on merges to your publishing branch. See Publish skills from your GitHub repository.

AI Function tasks for jobs (Beta)

November 4, 2026

You can now add AI Function tasks to your Azure Databricks jobs to run ai_parse_document, ai_extract, or ai_classify on the files in a volume or the rows of a table, without writing SQL. Each run processes only the inputs that are new or changed since the previous run and writes the results to a Unity Catalog table that later tasks can read. This feature is in Beta.

See AI Function tasks for jobs.

Okta connector is available in Beta

November 3, 2026

The managed Okta connector is now available in Beta in Databricks Lakeflow Connect. Workspace admins can enable Lakeflow Connect for Okta on the Previews page.

Use the connector to ingest identity and access data from Okta into Azure Databricks, including users, groups, group memberships, app integrations, devices, policies, and administrator roles. The connector uses SSWS API token authentication and supports incremental ingestion.

Lakehouse//RT supports fine-grained access control (Beta)

November 3, 2026

You can now run read queries on tables protected by row filters, column masks, and attribute-based access control (ABAC) policies with Lakehouse//RT. See Fine-grained access control.

Start Lakeflow Designer workflows from suggested or recent tables

November 3, 2026

Start a visual data prep in Lakeflow Designer from suggested, favorite, or recently used tables on the welcome screen. See Browse existing tables.

Edit shared Lakeflow Designer operators with Genie Code

November 3, 2026

Use Genie Code in Lakeflow Designer to create shared custom operators or edit them by workspace YAML file path. See Build a shared custom operator.

Write Lakeflow Designer results to Google Drive or SharePoint

November 3, 2026

Write Lakeflow Designer results to Google Drive or SharePoint with the Output operator. Each run creates or replaces a file of up to 2.75 MiB. See Output.

Set checkpoints across a Lakeflow Designer file

November 3, 2026

Set checkpoint options across a visual data prep file with Set all to Auto or Set all to On. See Configure operator checkpoints.

Control Lakebase sink upserts with merge strategies

November 3, 2026

When you write to Lakebase from Structured Streaming, you can use merge strategies to control how upserts update individual columns. Keep the first or last value, ignore nulls, or select values by an ordering column. Merge strategies require Databricks Runtime 19 and above. See Merge strategies for upserts.

Trigger Lakeflow Jobs when upstream jobs complete (Beta)

November 3, 2026

You can now run a Lakeflow Job when one or more upstream jobs complete, including across workspaces attached to the same Unity Catalog metastore. Configure dependencies on the downstream job. See Trigger jobs when upstream jobs complete.

Approve Genie tool actions in Slack and Microsoft Teams (Public Preview)

November 3, 2026

When Genie needs approval to run a connected external tool, the Databricks Genie apps for Slack and Microsoft Teams now show an approval prompt in the reply, so you can allow or deny the action without leaving the chat. See Approve tool actions and Approve tool actions.

Zerobus Ingest into default storage is now generally available

November 2, 2026

Ingesting into tables backed by default storage with Zerobus Ingest in Lakeflow Connect is now generally available. See Create or identify the target table.

Higher limits and BROWSE support for Unity Catalog secrets

November 2, 2026

A schema can now hold up to 1,000 Unity Catalog secrets, and a metastore up to 10,000, up from 100 and 1,000. The limits apply to Azure Databricks-managed secrets and secrets backed by Azure Key Vault. BROWSE on a catalog now applies to Unity Catalog secrets, so users can discover secrets and their metadata without being able to read the values or reference the secrets in code. See Grant access to secrets.

Simba JDBC Driver (Legacy) 2.8.7 is available

November 2, 2026

Simba JDBC Driver (Legacy) 2.8.7 updates jackson-core, jackson-databind, and jackson-datatype-jsr310 to 2.21.8. Download it from the JDBC drivers archive under All JDBC Driver Versions (Simba).

OneLake external locations are in Public Preview

November 2, 2026

OneLake external locations are now in Public Preview. Use a OneLake external location as managed storage for a Unity Catalog catalog to store managed tables, volumes, materialized views, and streaming tables in Microsoft OneLake while Unity Catalog governs access. Workspace admins can control access to External location support for OneLake from the Previews page.

See Connect Azure Databricks to a OneLake external location.

Managed warehouse for MLflow (Beta)

November 2, 2026

With managed warehouse, users can view traces stored in Unity Catalog in the MLflow UI without selecting a SQL warehouse. MLflow runs trace queries on a SQL warehouse that it creates in your workspace when your workspace supports it, and on serverless compute otherwise. Workspace admins can enable Managed Warehouse for MLflow on the Previews page. See Managed warehouse for MLflow traces.

AI Functions usage is now included in Unity Gateway budgets

November 1, 2026

Beginning November 1, 2026, Unity Gateway budgets include spend from task-specific AI Functions such as ai_parse_document, ai_extract, and ai_classify across batch and real-time execution paths. See Manage budgets for Unity Gateway.