New features, new prices: Microsoft 365's 2026 upcoming changes

What did Microsoft announce?

On 4^th December 2025, Microsoft announced a major evolution of Microsoft 365 across AI, security, productivity and endpoint management. Additionally, they announced a global pricing update effective 1^st July 2026. The company highlighted that more than 1,100 new features have been added to the platform over the past year, with 2026 bringing another wave of capability enhancements across Copilot, Intune, Exchange Online and Defender.

Copilot enhancements

Microsoft is significantly expanding Copilot capabilities across Microsoft 365. New Copilot Chat enhancements will bring richer AI assistance, deeper Microsoft Graph integration and improved accuracy in summarisation, planning and content generation. Enterprise customers will also see new security, management and analytics controls for Copilot Chat, giving IT teams better visibility and governance.

For organisations using Security Copilot, Microsoft is introducing a unified AI security agent framework, connecting intelligence from Defender, Intune, Entra ID and Compliance. Importantly, Security Copilot will begin rolling out automatically to all Microsoft 365 E5 customers in 2026. 

Microsoft Intune suite enhancements

Endpoint management is receiving a substantial uplift. In 2026, Microsoft is integrating several Intune Suite capabilities directly into core Microsoft 365 licences.

Newly included features will now cover Intune Remote Help, Intune Advanced Analytics, and improved device diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities, helping IT teams reduce resolution times and support costs.

Microsoft 365 E5 is becoming even more powerful with new advanced controls such as Endpoint Privilege Management, Enterprise App Management, and Microsoft Cloud PKI. This is one of the largest expansions of native endpoint management ever introduced in M365 and clearly signals Microsoft’s commitment to Intune as the future of device management.

Mailbox size changes

Microsoft also announced updates to mailbox storage allocations across Microsoft 365 plans. To better support AI search, indexing and cloud optimisation, Microsoft Business licences will receive a 50GB mailbox uplift, giving users more space without requiring additional storage add-ons.

Defender for office integration

Security remains a major focus in Microsoft’s 2026 roadmap. One of the most impactful changes is that Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 will now be included in a wider range of Microsoft 365 licences. This adds enterprise-grade protection such as anti-phishing, anti-malware, safe attachment scanning and advanced link protection directly into the core licence, eliminating the need for separate Defender add-ons.

For Business and Frontline plans, Microsoft is also expanding baseline security with enhanced safe-link URL analysis and integrated threat detection across email and collaboration workloads.

New capabilities coming in 2026

Here is a summary of the Microsoft 365 plan changes to each license:

Microsoft will issue detailed release notes and activation notices throughout 2026 as features become generally available.

Future pricing changes

Microsoft has confirmed that new pricing will take effect globally from 1^st July 2026, with local market adjustments, meaning UK (£) pricing will vary depending on exchange rates and regional adjustments. Based on the information shared in the announcement you can expect the following changes: