What’s New in Azure Event Grid
Azure Event Grid continues to evolve with new capabilities in General Availability and Public Preview – intended to help you enhance performance, security, and interoperability in modern event-driven systems. These enhancements strengthen Azure Event Grid’s foundational messaging layer for distributed systems—supporting real-time telemetry, automation, and hybrid workloads. With support for advanced MQTT features and flexible authentication models, Event Grid now offers: Stronger security posture through OAuth 2.0 and Custom Webhook authentication Operational efficiency with static client identifiers and message retention Broader integration across devices, applications, and cloud services General Availability Features MQTT OAuth 2.0 Authentication Authenticate MQTT clients using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) issued by any OpenID Connect (OIDC)-compliant identity provider. This enables seamless integration with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), custom identity platforms, or third-party IAM solutions. MQTT Custom Webhook Authentication Use external webhooks or Azure Functions to dynamically validate client connections. Authorize using shared access signatures (SAS), API keys, custom credentials, or X.509 certificate fingerprints. This is a powerful feature for scenarios requiring granular control across large, dynamic fleets of devices or multitenant environments. MQTT Assigned Client Identifiers Assign deterministic, pre-approved client identifiers to MQTT clients. This enables enhanced session continuity, better device tracking, simplified diagnostics, and improved auditability—critical for managing long-lived connections and operational visibility in regulated industries. Assign deterministic, pre-approved client identifiers to MQTT clients. This enables enhanced session continuity, better device tracking, simplified diagnostics, and improved auditability—critical for managing long-lived connections and operational visibility in regulated industries. First Class integration with Fabric Route MQTT messages and Cloud Events from Event Grid Namespace to Fabric Event Streams for real-time analytics, storage, visualization of IoT data without having to hop thru Event Hub. Public Preview Features HTTP Publish Bridge traditional HTTP-based applications into event-driven ecosystems by allowing HTTP clients to publish messages directly to Event Grid topics. This enables RESTful services, legacy systems, and webhooks to participate in real-time event workflows, complementing MQTT and cloud-native integrations. MQTT Retain Support Support for retained MQTT messages allows clients to receive the latest value on a topic immediately upon subscription—without waiting for the next publish. This is particularly useful in IoT telemetry scenarios, stateful dashboards, and device shadow synchronization. Retained messages are stored per topic with configurable expiry and can be cleared on demand. Unlocking Smart Factory Insights with Sparkplug B on Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker In the age of Industry 4.0, factories are becoming smarter, more connected, and increasingly data driven. A key enabler of this transformation is Sparkplug B, an MQTT-based protocol purpose-built for industrial IoT (IIoT). And now, with Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker, Sparkplug B comes to life in the cloud—securely, reliably, and at scale. What is Sparkplug B? Think of Sparkplug B as the common language for industrial devices. It defines how sensors, gateways, and SCADA systems talk to each other—sharing not just telemetry data (like temperature or RPM) but also device lifecycle information such as when a machine comes online (BIRTH) or goes offline (DEATH). Why it Matters for Manufacturers Real-time factory monitoring – View live machine vitals across distributed plants. Predictive maintenance – Anticipate failures by analyzing trends. Seamless SCADA integration – Auto-discover tags in systems like Ignition SCADA with Cirrus Link. Edge-to-cloud bridge – Bring legacy factory systems into Azure for analytics, AI, and automation. Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker + Sparkplug B With Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker, manufacturers can run Sparkplug B workloads with enterprise-grade reliability. A connected factory floor where insights flow seamlessly from edge devices to cloud-unlocking efficiency, uptime, and innovation using the following capabilities: QoS 1 for reliability (at-least-once delivery). Last Will & Testament (LWT) for real-time device state awareness. Retained messages to ensure new subscribers always see the last known good value. Native support for binary Sparkplug payloads over secure TLS. From Factory Floor to Cloud Insights Sensors measure machine temperature and RPM. Edge gateways publish Sparkplug B messages to Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker. Ignition SCADA with Chariot Cirrus Link auto-discovers and displays these tags. Azure Data Explorer or Fabric ingests the same data for real-time dashboards, predictive analytics, or automated alerts. Ready to Get Started? Learn more about Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker Sparkplug B Support
Announcing new features and updates in Azure Event Grid
Discover powerful new features in Azure Event Grid, enhancing its functionality and user experience. This fully managed event broker now supports multi-protocol interoperability, including MQTT, for scalable messaging. It seamlessly connects Microsoft-native and third-party services, enabling robust event-driven applications. Streamline event management with flexible push-pull communication patterns. We are thrilled to announce General Availability of the Cross-tenant delivery to Event Hubs, Service Bus, Storage Queues, and dead letter storage using managed identity with federated identity credentials (FIC) from Azure Event Grid topics, domains, system topics, and partner topics. New cross-tenant scenarios, currently in Public Preview enable delivery to Event Hubs, webhooks, and dead letter storage in Azure Event Grid namespaces. This includes system topics, partner topics, and domains, offering seamless integration. The update enhances flexibility for event-driven applications across tenants. Azure Event Grid now also offers managed identity support for webhook delivery for all their resources. Public Preview features for new cross-tenant scenarios and managed identity support for webhook delivery are currently available in West Central, West Europe, UK South, Central US, and more regions will be supported soon. We are also introducing the Public Preview for the support of Network Security Perimeter (NSP) in Azure Event Grid topics and domains, for inbound and outbound communication. This perimeter defines a boundary with implicit trust access between each resource, where you can have sets of inbound and outbound access rules. By incorporating these advanced security measures, Azure Event Grid enhances the defense against a wide range of cyber threats, helping organizations to safeguard their event-driven workloads. In addition to this, Azure Event Grid has introduced message ordering support within single MQTT client sessions, ensuring reliable sequential event delivery, and a connection rate limit of one attempt per second per session, which maintains system stability. Furthermore, the expansion to support up to 15 MQTT topic segments per topic or filter offers greater flexibility in topic hierarchies. High throughput messaging, supporting up to 1,000 messages per second per session, is now in Public Preview, making it ideal for demanding scenarios such as IoT telemetry and real-time analytics. Azure Event Grid now also offers OAuth 2.0 JWT authentication for MQTT clients in Public Preview. This feature enables secure client authentication via JSON Web Tokens (JWT) issued by OpenID Connect (OIDC) compliant providers, providing a lightweight, secure, and flexible authentication option for clients not provisioned in Azure. Additionally, Custom Webhook Authentication has been introduced, allowing dynamic client authentication through webhooks or Azure Functions, with Entra ID JWT validation for centralized and customizable strategies. Finally, Assigned Client Identifiers in Public Preview provide consistent client IDs, improving session management and operational control, further enhancing the scalability and flexibility of client authentication workflows. We believe these updates will greatly enhance your Azure Event Grid experience. We welcome your feedback and appreciate your ongoing partnership as we work to deliver top features and services.Announcing new features and updates in Azure Event Grid
We are excited to share several new updates and features in Azure Event Grid that enhance our service's capabilities and improve your experience. In this article, you will find more information about the General Availability of Webhook Endpoints, and custom domain names in Azure Event Grid, as well as the introduction of new Public Previews like the cross-tenant delivery, and namespace topic to namespace topic forwarding support. Azure Event Grid is a highly integrated event broker designed to simplify the development of event-driven applications. It features pub-sub scenarios with a rich variety of event sources and handlers, including first-party and third-party integrations. Its flexible design supports multi-protocol interoperability, push and pull delivery, as well as MQTT, allowing for diverse message consumption patterns. Below, we detail the latest additions and improvements now available. We are pleased to announce General Availability of the webhook endpoints in Azure Event Grid namespace topics. This feature allows for efficient and reliable push delivery to webhooks, expanding the possibilities for event-driven architectures and integrations. We are also excited to announce that custom domain names support is now Generally Available in Azure Event Grid’s MQTT broker. This new feature allows you to assign your own domain names to the MQTT and HTTP endpoints within your Azure Event Grid namespaces. By doing so, you can enhance security and simplify client configuration. Additionally, assigning custom domain names to namespaces can help improve availability, manage capacity, and facilitate cross-region client mobility. We are also excited to announce the General Availability of Microsoft Graph API events that provide notifications about state changes of resources in Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Conversations, and security alerts. In Public Preview, we are introducing support for cross-tenant delivery to Event Hubs, Service Bus, and Storage Queues using managed identity with federated identity credentials (FIC) in Azure Event Grid topics, domains, system topics and partner topics. This enhancement enables secure and efficient cross-tenant communication for basic resources. Lastly, we are launching the Public Preview for namespace topic to namespace topic forwarding, enabling seamless event forwarding between topics hosted in the same or different namespaces, simplifying the event routing and management. We are confident that these updates will provide significant benefits and improvements to your Azure Event Grid experience. We look forward to your feedback and continued partnership as we strive to deliver the best possible features and services.
