Feedback about MS-102 retirement

TL;DR: I don't think you should retire the MS-102 as it really is a big downgrade losing and expert M-365 administor certification just for it to be replaced by an unrelated and under leveled AI Services administrator one.

Hello community, 

This is my first post and I think it's a good time to open a thread to share some feedback about the retirement of the MS-102 exam and certification and I encourage others learners and users to do the same.

For those who don't know It was announced last June 25th that exam MS-102 and Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert are retiring October 2026 replaced by AB-650 Microsoft 365 Certified: AI Services Administrator Associate, exam beta on July 26.

You can check the announcement here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/skills-hub-blog/microsoft-credentials-roundup-june-2026/4528350?WT.mc_id=studentamb_165290

I was shocked to read that because last week I scheduled my exam and I didn't see any notice about future retirement. I just rechecked today and there isn't still any update on the retirement on the MS-102 cert or exam pages:

Cert page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/m365-administrator-expert/

Exam page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/exams/ms-102/

So even today, lot's of users are scheduling the MS-102 exam right now without knowing that it is expected to be retired soon

I think's it's a weird move to retire an expert Microsoft 365 administrator certification just for it to be replaced by just an associate certifciation AI Services Administrator Associate. So we lose and expert certification abount managing M365 and we can only get an associate certification about AI services in it's place

I think it would've better to have AB-650 as an additional certification, maybe even a prerequisite for the M365 Administrator Expert just like MS-700 or the SC-401

Lot's of recruitments department look for expertise about managing M365 and MS-102 take a big part on lot's of admins resumes to provee their knowledge about managing M365, so we won't only lose a cert or exam, we lose a way to prove knowledge about managing M365 at an expert level.

I've read lot's of users complaining about this retirement and I hope you could get feedback about it and rearrange this move. 

Thank you for reading.