September 2026

Azure Databricks released these features and improvements in September 2026.

Note

In most cases, the release date and content listed below only correspond to actual deployment of the Azure Public Cloud.

It provide the evolution history of Azure Databricks service on Azure Public Cloud for your reference, which may not be consistent with the actual deployment on Azure operated by 21Vianet.

Note

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

Standard performance mode is now available for one-time runs in the Jobs API

September 11, 2026

You can now set performance_target to STANDARD in the Jobs API. Apache Airflow's DatabricksSubmitRunOperator also supports this. See Create and trigger a one-time run and Select a performance mode.

Sharing foreign Iceberg tables with OpenSharing is now generally available

September 11, 2026

Sharing and reading foreign Iceberg tables with OpenSharing is now generally available. Providers can share Iceberg tables federated from foreign Iceberg catalogs using Lakehouse Federation, including to recipients using external Iceberg clients. See Add foreign Iceberg tables to a share for providers and Read data in a shared foreign Iceberg table for recipients.

Sharing foreign schemas and tables with OpenSharing is now generally available

September 11, 2026

Sharing and reading foreign schemas and foreign tables with OpenSharing is now generally available. Providers can share foreign schemas and tables federated from external data sources using Lakehouse Federation, without copying data into Azure Databricks. See Add foreign schemas or tables to a share for providers and Read data in a shared foreign table or foreign schema for recipients.

Sharing foreign schemas and tables materializes data on the provider's side, which incurs compute and storage costs. See How do I incur and check OpenSharing costs?.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is now available on Unity Gateway

September 11, 2026

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is now available on Unity Gateway with text and image inputs.

Customers are responsible for ensuring their compliance with applicable terms.

External secrets in Unity Catalog (Beta)

September 9, 2026

External secrets connect a Unity Catalog schema to Azure Key Vault. The secrets appear in Unity Catalog as read-only securable objects that you govern with Unity Catalog privileges. Azure Databricks reads their values from Azure Key Vault on demand.

time_bucket SQL function aligns timestamps to fixed-width time buckets

September 8, 2026

time_bucket returns the start of the fixed-width interval a timestamp falls into, aligned to an origin you choose (for example, 15-minute or 3-month buckets). Use it instead of date_trunc when the bucket width or start is not a calendar unit.

See time_bucket function.

Partner-powered AI features can no longer be disabled in the settings UI

September 8, 2026

You can no longer disable the partner-powered AI features setting in the account or workspace settings UI, but can still enable it. Until November 1, 2026, you can still use the Settings API to enable or disable the setting.

On November 1, 2026, the setting will be removed, and any change will then require contacting your Azure Databricks account team.

ABAC DENY policies are in Beta

September 8, 2026

ABAC DENY policies are in Beta in Unity Catalog. DENY policies can be used to explicitly deny the MANAGE ACCESS CONTROL privilege to prevent specified principals, including object owners, from performing access-management operations. They always take precedence over any grant.

Share metric views with OpenSharing (Beta)

September 3, 2026

You can now share metric views with Azure Databricks users in other metastores or accounts using OpenSharing. See Add metric views to a share and Read shared metric views.

Private network gateway is in Beta

September 3, 2026

Private network gateway is in Beta. A private network gateway connects Azure Databricks serverless compute to resources in your VNet, on-premises systems, and the internet through a single managed gateway, reusing your existing network connectivity configuration (NCC). Use it for broad private connectivity without onboarding each resource individually, to route serverless egress through your own security appliances for content inspection, or to send egress from a stable set of IP addresses. Account admins can enable it from the account console Previews page.

Environment version 6 is now available

September 3, 2026

You can now select environment version 6 as your base environment for serverless and standard classic compute.

Git Folder Serverless is in Beta

September 2, 2026

You can now use Git Folder Serverless to share serverless compute and a pyproject.toml-managed environment across notebooks and files in a Git folder.

AI Search supports struct and map columns and filter-only queries

September 2, 2026

You can now index and filter struct and map columns in AI Search, and run filter-only queries that return rows matching a filter without vector or keyword retrieval.

Genie Code scheduled tasks are now generally available

September 1, 2026

Genie Code scheduled tasks are now generally available. You can schedule Genie Code to run a prompt on a recurring schedule. Each run executes your prompt as a full Genie Code session and produces a continuable Genie chat with the results, so you can turn recurring analysis and other work into an unattended background task. Create a scheduled task by asking Genie Code in chat or from the Schedules menu.

Databricks Runtime maintenance updates (09/01)

September 1, 2026

New maintenance updates are available for supported Databricks Runtime versions. These updates include bug fixes, security patches, and performance improvements. For details, see:

Automatic change data feed is now generally available

September 1, 2026

Automatic change data feed (Auto CDF) computes row-level changes at query time using row tracking, without requiring you to manually enable change data feed on each Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg v3 table. Auto CDF removes write-time overhead and makes MERGE and UPDATE operations about 15% faster on tables that you query for changes. It works with batch queries, Structured Streaming, and Delta Lake Sharing, and requires Databricks Runtime 19 LTS or above with row tracking enabled. See Automatic change data feed.

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