The Power Platform 2026 Release Wave 1 covers the period from April to September 2026, with general availability beginning on 1 April and UK tenant deployment scheduled for 3 to 6 April. Unlike some previous waves, there is no early access stage this time around, so features move straight into production rollout from the start of April.
Across Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, Copilot Studio, Dataverse and governance tooling, the direction is consistent: AI is moving from something you add to a solution into something that is embedded in how you build, run and govern the platform itself. For businesses already investing in Power Platform, this wave delivers practical improvements across almost every layer of the stack.
Power Apps
The headline change for Power Apps users is the arrival of Microsoft 365 Copilot chat directly inside model-driven apps. Rather than switching between applications to ask questions, gather context or generate a summary, users can do all of that from a side pane within the app they are already working in. Copilot draws on the app's data, related records and Microsoft 365 signals to answer questions, visualise information and suggest next steps. First-party agents such as Researcher and Analyst can be invoked from the same pane, as can custom agents built in Copilot Studio.
For makers, generative pages are expanding in availability and extensibility. These are AI-generated app pages that accelerate the build process by interpreting a requirement and producing a working layout, reducing the design and configuration time for new screens.
Search also gets a meaningful improvement. Grid filters and lookup fields will support automatic wildcard matching, fuzzy matching to accommodate typos and spacing inconsistencies, and highlighting of the searched phrase within returned results. On the surface this sounds minor, but for users working with large datasets daily, accurate search that tolerates imperfect input makes a noticeable difference.
The Power Apps Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server moves into public preview in this wave. This enables agents to interact with Power Apps as tools, starting with the ability to parse unstructured data into form fields and create records directly, while flagging them for human review. An enhanced agent feed sits alongside this, giving makers the ability to provide users with visibility into what an agent is doing, with side-by-side comparison views for approvals and direct navigation to the records involved.
Power Automate
Power Automate receives updates across both cloud flows and desktop flows, with a particular emphasis on resilience and AI-assisted authoring.
Self-healing desktop flows are one of the more practically significant additions. When a desktop flow encounters a transient error, it can detect and resolve the issue automatically rather than failing and waiting for manual intervention. For organisations running large volumes of unattended automation, this reduces the operational overhead of monitoring and fixing flows that break due to minor, recoverable issues.
Deleted flow recovery is a welcome addition for administrators. Flow owners and admins will be able to recover accidentally deleted flows within a defined timeframe, removing what has historically been an irreversible mistake.
Power Apps integration for desktop flows allows apps to be invoked directly from a desktop flow, with inputs passed through automatically. This closes a gap that previously required workarounds and creates a more seamless connection between attended automation and app-based processes.
Copilot's role in flow authoring also expands, with improved suggestions for more advanced flow logic and the ability for agents to trigger and adjust automated processes as part of broader agentic workflows. The combination of AI-assisted authoring and self-healing execution makes this a more mature automation platform than previous waves have offered.
Microsoft Copilot Studio
Copilot Studio continues its development as the primary tool for building, deploying and governing agents across the Microsoft ecosystem.
Agent evaluation capabilities arrive in this wave, giving teams structured ways to measure how an agent behaves in practice and how well it performs against defined expectations. In development and testing, agents often look convincing. In production, with real data and varied user inputs, behaviour can drift. Having evaluation tooling built into the platform addresses this gap directly and supports more reliable, consistent agent performance at scale.
Multi-agent orchestration is extended, allowing complex workflows to coordinate multiple agents working across different systems and processes. This is relevant for organisations looking to automate end-to-end scenarios that span more than one area of the business rather than using agents in isolated, single-purpose roles.
Computer-Using Agents represent one of the more ambitious additions. These agents can interact with any system that has a graphical user interface, including websites and desktop applications, without requiring an API or integration layer. For organisations with legacy systems or third-party tools that cannot be connected through standard connectors, this opens up automation possibilities that were previously difficult to achieve.
Deeper integration with Microsoft Foundry and Work IQ gives agents access to richer organisational data when generating outputs, improving the accuracy and relevance of what agents produce.
Power Pages
Power Pages gains two notable additions aimed at different audiences.
The Agent API for Power Pages allows site creators to build custom chat and conversational experiences that connect directly to Copilot Studio agents. Organisations can embed intelligent, context-aware interactions into their portals without building custom infrastructure, and the API gives enough flexibility to create experiences tailored to the specific needs of the site and its users.
The Power Pages plugin for GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Code reaches public preview in this wave. Developers can describe a site in natural language and the plugin handles scaffolding, Web API integrations, permissions and deployment. It is purpose-built for the Power Pages platform, meaning it understands table permissions, web roles, site settings and authentication configuration rather than generating generic code that requires significant manual adjustment.
A Security Agent is also introduced, providing low-code makers, developers and admins with actionable insights and recommendations for improving the security posture of their sites. For organisations that publish external-facing portals, having AI-assisted security guidance built into the tooling rather than relying solely on manual review is a practical step forward.
Microsoft Dataverse
Dataverse receives investment as the data foundation that underpins AI experiences across the platform. The focus this wave is on making it a more capable, programmable and governable platform for agentic scenarios.
Work IQ integration brings organisation-specific intelligence into Copilot and agent experiences, with adaptive learning that improves over time based on how the organisation actually works. All reasoning and decisions are fully auditable, which is an important requirement for organisations that need transparency in their AI outputs.
Python SDK support, alongside improvements to Dataverse APIs and MCP server connectivity, extends the ability for developers to build and manage agent scenarios programmatically. SharePoint lists can now be used as a data source for Copilot agents, broadening the range of information an agent can draw on without requiring that data to be moved into Dataverse first.
New storage management tools support enterprise-grade compliance requirements at scale, addressing a practical concern for larger organisations managing significant volumes of data across multiple environments.
Governance and Administration
Governance tooling sees some of the most practically important changes in this wave, particularly for IT leaders and platform administrators managing Power Platform at scale.
Power Platform Inventory reaches general availability, giving tenant administrators a unified view of cloud flows, Copilot Studio agent flows and Workflow agent workflows across every environment. Planned expansion to include connectors, actions and usage data will make it significantly easier to identify active automations, enforce compliance and prevent orphaned resources accumulating across the tenant.
AI-powered governance agents can automate tenant monitoring and remediation tasks, reducing the manual effort involved in maintaining a well-governed environment. Alongside this, real-time risk assessment in Copilot Studio gives administrators visibility into potential issues before they reach production.
Granular Copilot credit consumption tracking with pay-as-you-go caps addresses one of the more common administrative concerns as Copilot usage grows. Organisations can now monitor credit consumption at a resource level rather than managing it as a single undifferentiated figure, which makes budgeting and cost attribution considerably more straightforward.
GitHub integration and deploy from Git mature the application lifecycle management story for teams building solutions on the platform, providing full audit trails and bringing Power Platform development practices closer to the engineering standards many development teams already apply.
What This Means for Advantage Clients
The 2026 Wave 1 Power Platform release is broader in scope than many recent waves. The practical improvements to search, flow recovery and desktop automation resilience will benefit organisations that are already running Power Platform in day-to-day operations. The more significant changes, around agents, Copilot Studio evaluation, MCP server connectivity and governance tooling, are most relevant to organisations that are either building out their AI capability or managing the platform at scale across multiple environments and user groups.
For clients currently using Power Automate, Power Apps or Copilot Studio, it is worth reviewing which features apply to your current setup and which require additional licensing or administrator configuration before they are available to users.
If you would like to understand how the Wave 1 changes affect your existing Power Platform investment, or if you are looking at adopting Power Platform for the first time, our team is here to help you make sense of what is relevant for your business.
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