A release wave used to land twice a year, like clockwork, in spring and autumn. A thick document would arrive, giving six months to plan, and every Dynamics 365 or Power Platform admin knew the drill by heart. That drill ended on 25 August 2026, when Microsoft quietly pulled the plug.
No more release wave model. No September 2026 Release Wave 2. Full stop. It’s been replaced by a single, always-updating AI at Work roadmap that publishes new capabilities as soon as they’re committed, rather than waiting for a calendar date.
It may sound minor, but it’s not. Here’s what’s happening—and how to plan when the roadmap never stays still.
What Microsoft Actually Announced
Richard Riley runs Agents and Low Code at Microsoft, and he put it plainly: Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft Dataverse roadmap content is folding directly into the AI at Work roadmap, alongside Microsoft 365, Copilot, and the rest of the AI portfolio.
The old habit was to sit on updates for months, then dump the lot at once in a release wave. Now, a feature is published the moment it’s ready, and that entry keeps getting updated as it moves through preview, rollout, and GA.
Why bother? Microsoft’s answer is blunt: AI features move faster than a six-monthly cycle can handle, and chasing separate product blogs just to keep track has become a proper chore.
A few dates to pin down. From September 2026, new capabilities started landing straight on the roadmap. Anything already listed with a preview or GA date from 1 June 2026 onwards is migrating across through autumn.
By 15 November 2026, the old Release Planner closes its doors for good, leaving the AI at Work roadmap as the only public home left standing.
What Doesn’t Change
It’s worth untangling this bit, because the headline’s easy to misread. What’s changing is how Microsoft talks about its roadmap, not how it builds or ships products.
Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform still ship on their usual schedule behind the scenes. What’s gone is the twice-yearly habit of bundling every announcement into one big document.
And credit where it’s due, the new roadmap beats the old Release Planner. CSV export. RSS subscriptions were scoped to a single feature. Shareable filtered links. Search by feature ID.
If the old planner felt clunky to you, this genuinely is better, not just a rename with a fresh coat of paint.
Why This Matters More Than a Tooling Change
The real story was never the roadmap page. It’s what the whole move says about where Microsoft’s business applications are heading.
Put Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Dataverse on the same roadmap as Copilot and the wider AI portfolio, and you’ve made an architectural statement. These were never meant to keep separate product lines running on separate clocks. They’re now one connected AI platform, and the roadmap has simply caught up to that reality.
We’ve watched this exact direction unfold across agentic ERP in Dynamics 365 and the agents now built straight into Dynamics 365 F&O, features that used to queue up for a release wave now just show up when they’re done.
For planning, that’s not trivial. “Spring wave” and “autumn wave” can’t be your two annual checkpoints anymore. Something worth noting can land on any given Tuesday.
How to Plan Without the Old Rhythm
Losing a fixed cadence can feel like losing structure. It doesn’t have to. A handful of adjustments will keep you ahead of it, rather than catch you off guard.
Build your own review rhythm to replace the old wave check-in. Microsoft itself recommends blocking out time a few times a year with stakeholders to walk through the roadmap together; the discipline simply moves from Microsoft’s calendar to yours.
An RSS feed scoped to the features you run means updates find you, rather than sitting buried in a document covering five products you’ve never touched.
And governance matters more now, not less, once updates stop arriving on a predictable date. A feature can appear mid-quarter with zero warnings, so a clear process for reviewing and switching things on stops being a nice-to-have and becomes essential.
That’s the discipline behind our guide to governing the Power Platform at scale, and it suits a fast-moving roadmap just as much as it suits Managed Environments and DLP.
Take the whole change as a nudge to revisit your AI adoption plan, too. Still thinking in “we’ll wait for the next wave” terms? Microsoft just took that excuse off the table.
Our wider guide on responsible AI in practice lays out the kind of ongoing loop- govern, map, measure, manage- that fits a platform updating constantly far better than any twice-yearly glance ever could.
What to Do Before November
A few things worth sorting while the transitions still live.
Bookmark the AI at Work roadmap right now; don’t wait for the Release Planner to vanish beneath you. Export whatever’s saved in My Release Plans, since custom views won’t follow you over to the new experience automatically.
Build filtered, feature-specific views for whatever your organisation cares about, so you’re not wading through updates for products you’ve never touched.
And if your team ever built a process around the old twice-yearly wave, now’s the moment to revisit it, not after the Release Planner’s already switched off.
Conclusion
The end of release waves was never about losing a familiar document twice a year. It signals that Microsoft’s business applications and its AI portfolio have merged into a single, continuously evolving platform, and the old six-monthly rhythm could no longer keep pace.
If you’re still planning around “the next wave,” this is the moment to build something steadier instead: a continuous way to track and govern what’s coming next.
If you’d like help building a roadmap review and governance process that fits this new always-on model, that’s exactly what we do. As an ISO 27001–certified Microsoft partner, Stallions Solutions helps organisations stay ahead of Microsoft’s roadmap without losing control of what gets adopted.
Book a free assessment, and we’ll help you build a process that works with continuous change, honest advice, and no hard sell.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there still a Release Wave 2 for 2026?
No. Microsoft confirmed it won’t announce a September 2026 Release Wave 2. Instead, Microsoft will publish new capabilities continuously on the AI at Work roadmap.
What is the AI at Work roadmap?
It’s Microsoft’s single, continuously updated destination for upcoming capabilities across Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Dataverse, Microsoft 365 and Copilot, replacing the previous twice-yearly release wave documents.
When does the old Release Planner retire?
The Release Planner is scheduled to retire on 15 November 2026, after which the AI at Work roadmap becomes the primary public source for this information.
Does this mean Dynamics 365 updates are slowing down or stopping?
No, the opposite. Products continue to ship on their normal schedule. What’s changing is how Microsoft communicates upcoming features, from continuous updates rather than in twice-yearly bundles.
Will my saved views from My Release Plans carry over?
No. Microsoft has confirmed that custom views saved in My Release Plans will not transfer automatically to the new AI at Work roadmap. It’s worth exporting anything you need before the transition completes.
