Microsoft Ignite 2026, the company's conference for IT professionals, developers, partners and business leaders, runs November 17 to 20 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, with an optional pre-day on November 16 and a free online pass, according to the event's FAQ. Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), and Judson Althoff, CEO of its commercial business, give the opening keynote at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on Tuesday, November 17, at Chase Center. The session catalog says the two will “unveil the latest innovations driving the next wave of AI transformation.”
Nadella is back a year after Althoff led the keynote in his place. In October 2025, Windows Central reported that Microsoft had confirmed Nadella would not speak at Ignite 2025, quoting a spokesperson who said Althoff would lead the keynote. Microsoft's blog post on the first day of that event listed five keynote executives, starting with Althoff, and Nadella was not among them.
This year's keynote comes 20 days after Microsoft reported 48% Azure revenue growth for the first quarter of fiscal 2027, which ended September 30.
What Microsoft says it will show
Microsoft's event pages do not list announcements. The agenda promises “Microsoft's latest announcements” and “a preview of what's coming across AI, cloud, security, and data.”
The clearest guide is a post Althoff published on October 27, the day before Microsoft's quarterly results. He described a “platform approach” resting on three products: Copilot as the place people work with AI, the Microsoft IQ platform to build on a company's own knowledge while protecting it, and Agent 365 to provide “Trust and Observability at every layer of the stack.” He ended by saying he hoped to see customers at Ignite “to share the latest innovations.”
Jared Spataro, Microsoft's chief marketing officer for AI at Work, closed a September 25 post on the rebuilt Copilot app this way:
There is so much more coming to Copilot. Join us at Microsoft Ignite … to learn about the latest Copilot innovation…Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer for AI at Work at Microsoft, September 25, 2026
Lindsay Myers, corporate vice president of security marketing, wrote on September 30 that the keynote includes a security segment and that attendees will “see the Microsoft Security roadmap first.”
Who is speaking
Althoff returns at 9 a.m. PT on Wednesday, November 18, for the partner keynote in Moscone West, with Mala Anand, Microsoft's chief customer officer; Nicole Dezen, its chief partner officer; Ralph Haupter, chief revenue officer for small and medium enterprises and channel; and Stephen Boyle, who leads enterprise partner sales. Dezen wrote that more than 80 partner breakouts run during the week, including one on partner incentives for fiscal 2027.
Below the keynotes sit four Innovation Sessions, which the FAQ says connect “Microsoft's latest innovations to the decisions facing your business.” They track Althoff's three products, plus infrastructure:
Jacob Andreou, executive vice president for Copilot, leads the Copilot session, covering Copilot, Windows, Teams and “new FinOps capabilities” for managing spending (Tuesday, 4 p.m. PT).
Jay Parikh, executive vice president of CoreAI, and Arun Ulag, executive vice president of Azure Data, present the Microsoft IQ session (Wednesday, 11:30 a.m. PT).
Charles Lamanna, executive vice president for Copilot, agents and platform, and Hayete Gallot, executive vice president of Microsoft Security, take a session on “observability at every layer of the stack” (Wednesday, 2 p.m. PT).
Pavan Davuluri, executive vice president of Windows + Devices, and Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer of Azure, discuss AI infrastructure from cloud to edge (Tuesday, 2 p.m. PT).
Passes, prices and deadlines
The registration page lists two in-person passes and a free online one, and the FAQ adds a Pre-Day option:
Pass | Price | Dates | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|
Full Conference | $2,325 | Nov 17 to 20 | Keynote, sessions, labs, Hub |
Hub Conference | $1,625 | Nov 17 to 19 | Hub, theater sessions, lunch |
Pre-Day add-on | $325 | Nov 16 | Labs and breakouts |
Digital | Free | Nov 17 to 20 | Livestreams, recordings |
Source: Microsoft's Ignite registration page and FAQ, October 29.
The registration page lists no discount, and the FAQ says there is no bundle pricing. Two deadlines have passed: hotel rooms booked through registration were due by 3 p.m. PT on October 16, and the deadline to cancel for a refund, minus a $200 processing fee, was 11:59 p.m. PT that day. Registrations can still be transferred to someone else until 5 p.m. PT on Friday, November 13.
The free pass gets most of the news. In Microsoft's session catalog on October 29, both keynotes, the four Innovation Sessions and all 391 breakouts were marked “Will be recorded,” and the FAQ says recordings usually appear within 24 to 48 hours. What it does not get is the hands-on part: the 49 in-person labs, 192 table talks and 244 of the 249 lightning talks are in person only and marked “Will not be recorded,” 485 sessions in all, by SaasBuzz's count.
In-person attendees can also book free certification exams on site. Microsoft's Book of News for Ignite 2025 put attendance in San Francisco at more than 20,000.
What we'll be watching
What agentic Copilot work costs
On September 25 Microsoft changed how Copilot is priced, pairing the per-user license with usage-based billing. Everyday use stays on the license, while Cowork, Code, Autopilot and the most capable models run on usage-based billing with Copilot Credits, Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 and Copilot, wrote. She said some capabilities will start on usage billing and move into the license “as the economics allow.”
Microsoft also said Code would reach “broad availability in the coming weeks” and that Autopilot, an agent it says “keeps working even when you're not,” would enter private preview at the end of September. Watch where each stands at Ignite, and whether any of it moves off the meter.
How many agents customers run
Microsoft introduced Agent 365 at Ignite 2025, calling it “the control plane for agents” in that year's Book of News: software to observe, manage and secure AI agents, including ones built on open-source frameworks or other companies' platforms. Althoff's October post gives a sense of scale a year later: Truist uses it to manage more than 13,000 agents, and Insight Enterprises, a Microsoft partner, has found 9,734 with it.
Agent Platform is the catalog's second-largest topic, with 222 sessions, behind Cloud & AI with 270. Redmondmag wrote in an October 5 preview that Microsoft “is increasingly addressing the infrastructure surrounding autonomous systems: identity, permissions, runtime security, governance, evaluation and observability.”
Azure, after a 48% quarter
Microsoft's results for the quarter, released October 28, set the backdrop: revenue rose 19% to $92.3 billion, Azure revenue grew 48%, and commercial remaining performance obligation, contracted revenue not yet recognized, rose 73% to $677 billion. Nadella said in the release that Microsoft is “earning trust through agent safety and security.” SaasBuzz's report on the quarter has the detail.
Microsoft bills the Tuesday infrastructure session as a discussion of “why Azure is the foundation for mission-critical AI systems.”
