Partner Blog | Preparing for the next stage of partner skilling in 2026
As 2025 draws to a close, we are seeing the impact of focus and follow-through across the partner ecosystem. This year, partners made skilling a deliberate priority. Across solution areas, teams deepened technical capability, strengthened sales readiness, and brought innovation into real customer engagements. That intent is translating into more confident delivery, faster time to value, and practices built to operate in an AI-driven market. Our November skilling update outlined the latest resources, bootcamps, and learning paths available to partners. As we look ahead to 2026, this moment is about turning those investments into a scalable skilling foundation that supports consistent delivery, drives customer outcomes, and positions your organization to grow as demand for AI, cloud, security, and data solutions continues to accelerate. Continue reading hereDon't miss session two, Adopting Copilot Chat and Agent Builder. Sign up now!
Our dynamic four-part webinar series, Agentic AI + Copilot Partner Skilling Accelerator, empowers you to harness the Microsoft AI ecosystem to unlock new revenue streams and enhance customer success. Across each of the four sessions, experts will deliver practical guidance, best practices, and proven strategies for applying AI tools across no-code, low-code, and pro-code scenarios. Tune in to the second session, Adopting Copilot Chat and Agent Builder, to learn how Copilot and agents can help your business design, position, and sell AI solutions that drive customer success and revenue growth. This live virtual event is scheduled for December 1, 2025. Register today to reserve your spot.Partner Blog | Build what’s next: Accelerating partner success with Microsoft skilling
This week at Microsoft Ignite, one message came through clearly: capability fuels growth. Across every industry and every role, partners investing in skilling are accelerating innovation, deepening customer trust, and driving measurable impact. Skilling is the new currency of the AI era. As organizations transform, partners are turning knowledge into action, advancing technical and business expertise to lead with confidence and drive customer outcomes. In the past year, more than 2.4 million partner learners have engaged in training across solution areas, and 1.7 million have completed AI-specific courses, a 66% increase year over year. Through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, we’re investing in resources that make learning simpler, more accessible, and more aligned to opportunity. From the centralized Partner Skilling Hub to Certification Weeks, in-person training events, LevelUp, and AI-focused bootcamps, partners can strengthen their technical depth, expand sales capability, and build the skills that turn potential into performance. Read the full list of partner announcements from Ignite in Nicole Dezen’s blog. Continue reading hereRedefine work in an AI-enhanced world: Attend the Frontier Firms webinar November 24, 2025
Our dynamic four-part webinar series, Agentic AI + Copilot Partner Skilling Accelerator, empowers you to use the Microsoft AI ecosystem to unlock new revenue streams and enhance customer success. Across four sessions, experts will deliver practical guidance, industry best practices, and proven strategies for applying AI tools in no-code, low-code, and pro-code scenarios. The first session in this learning series explores Frontier Firms and how to position yourself as one, provides an overview of the Microsoft AI ecosystem, and offers tips on when and how to apply specific Microsoft tools. Don't miss this chance to level up your business's ability to design, position, and sell AI solutions that accelerate customer success and increase revenue. This live virtual event is scheduled for November 24, 2025. Register today to reserve your spot!Azure Kubernetes Service Automatic: Fast and frictionless Kubernetes for all
AKS Automatic simplifies Kubernetes by offering a fully managed, opinionated experience that abstracts away from infrastructure complexity, while keeping the full power of Kubernetes at your fingertips. Learn how production-ready clusters and automated infrastructure operations can accelerate your time to delivery and simplify operations for you! Check out the announcement blog here!Join the Movement at Azure Dev Summit!
Azure Dev Summit is a chance for you to join a community of developers, architects, and tech leaders building with Azure, .NET, and Microsoft AI. This isn’t just another conference. It is a Microsoft-sponsored celebration of innovation, learning, and connection — and we’re bringing some of the most inspiring voices in tech to the stage. Find out more about the speakers at Azure Dev Summit and make sure to register! https://azuredevsummit.com/Build expertise, earn recognition, and drive transformation with Microsoft skilling
At Microsoft, we know that every innovation journey starts with the right skills. Our goal is to make your skilling experience streamlined and effective, so you spend less time searching for resources and more time innovating. We have designed the Partner Skilling Hub as a central portal where you can build new capabilities, accelerate organizational growth, and learn how to set your solutions apart and create meaningful customer outcomes. With advanced search and filters by category, solution area, and skill level, you can quickly find live events, self-paced courses, and training opportunities tailored to your needs. Below are just some of the skilling resources available to you through this new portal so you can spend less time searching and more time innovating. Continue reading hereVirtual Event | Becoming Frontier: Pitch and land the AI transformation story
Join us for a hands-on training designed to sharpen your AI transformation pitch. Over three days, you will dive into Microsoft’s latest executive, platform, business services, and security conversations, learn how to bring the Copilot and agentic story to life, and practice landing it with impact. With expert-led sessions, practical pitch decks, and live Q&A, you will leave with the confidence to guide customers through their AI journey and earn a shareable digital badge along the way. Americas | Tuesday, October 14, 9:00 AM - Thursday, October 16, 12:00 PM PDT Asia | Wednesday, October 15, 9:00 AM - Friday, October 17, 12:00 PM IST EMEA | Wednesday, October 15, 9:00 AM - Friday, October 17, 12:00 PM BST Register today!Partner Blog | Build in-demand capabilities with Microsoft Titan Skilling Academy
Continuous learning is essential for organizations using cloud and AI technologies to maintain a competitive edge. To help Microsoft partners stay at the forefront of their industries, we are pleased to share the latest updates to our partner skilling initiatives. These changes are part of an ongoing effort to simplify and enhance the skilling process, ensuring that partners like you continue to deliver the innovative solutions customers need. Microsoft Titan Skilling Academy went worldwide June 1 As announced in March, Microsoft Titan Skilling Academy is a new, centralized skilling portal designed to help sales professionals in partner organizations boost their skills and position themselves as industry leaders. We built Microsoft Titan Skilling Academy as a unified hub that delivers a learning framework for partner skilling—simplifying the experience and providing clear, structured guidance across sales, pre-sales, and customer deployment cycles to help you close deals and drive revenue. Microsoft Titan Skilling Academy launched globally on June 1, 2025, with a learning journey for Security called "Microsoft Sales Titan: Threat Protection." Designed to promote Microsoft Threat Protection SKUs, this offering provides sales teams with on-demand training sessions focused on understanding and articulating the value of Microsoft 365 E5 Security licenses. With Sales Titan: Threat Protection, members of your sales team can improve their ability to close deals and earn Microsoft accredited badges—which demonstrate their learnings to both clients and Microsoft. You can also gain access to supporting resources that help drive confident, informed customer conversations. This self-serve learning journey is now available to partners globally. Sales Titan, the first module in the Microsoft Titan Skilling Academy, will eventually integrate into our new skilling platform, launching this July. This unified environment consolidates each of our skilling platforms into a single, easy-to-access location. Continue reading hereGPT-5 in Azure AI Foundry: The future of AI apps and agents starts here
OpenAI’s GPT-5 is available today in Azure AI Foundry. GPT-5 adds advanced capabilities to support agentic workflows, complex code synthesis, and safer, more flexible integrations. Ideal for: Unified reasoning + chat for end-to-end problem solving Agentic task mastery with multi-step tool use and auditable decisions, Frontier coding with minimal prompting Developer controls for depth, speed, verbosity Free-form function calling (no rigid JSON schemas) Safer completions for sensitive prompts Learn more here!
