Microsoft 365 global outage disrupts services across 74 countries and territories

A global Microsoft 365 service outage disrupted digital operations in at least 74 countries and territories between November 12 and November 13, 2026. The incident began at 16:17 UTC on November 12, 2026, when Exchange Online experienced a failure identified by incident code EX1550543. The technical failure impacted a wide range of essential services, including Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and Copilot.

Technical causes and infrastructure overload

The outage originated from a saturation of a central process responsible for TLS encryption and upstream authentication. This technical failure occurred following a recent network configuration change. Unexpected server shutdowns subsequently forced a redistribution of global traffic, which caused a cascading overload on the remaining infrastructure. This cascade eventually affected 18 different services.

Microsoft confirmed that the disruption was not the result of a cyberattack or malicious activity. Charles Lamanna, the Executive Vice President of Copilot, Agents, and Platform at Microsoft, stated that the company is working to resolve the issue and there is no evidence of malicious or cyber activity. By November 14, 2026, Microsoft reported continuous progress in recovery, noting broad improvements in North America and sustained improvements across much of Europe.

Impact on critical sectors and AI tools

The service disruption impacted critical sectors including healthcare, aviation, police, and intelligence agencies. In the aviation industry, airlines such as Akasa Air, IndiGo, Malaysia Airlines, and Emirates reported email disruptions. However, flight operations for these carriers remained scheduled during the event.

The outage also extended to the artificial intelligence sector. Third-party AI tools, including ChatGPT and Claude, experienced disruptions because of broken connectors within the Microsoft ecosystem. The scale of the disruption was reflected in user reports, with Downdetector logging at least 130,000 reports, while other reports indicated that Downdetector logged 140,000 reports by 2 am.

Global recovery and historical context

Recovery efforts showed significant progress across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region by November 14, 2026. The outage lasted for a period of 12 hours, according to reports. This event has been compared by officials to the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage, which caused global IT disruption following a software update.

While the technical failure caused widespread digital friction, the recovery process has moved toward stabilization across the affected regions. Officials continue to monitor the stability of the infrastructure to prevent further cascading failures within the Microsoft ecosystem.

Glossary

• Teams — Teams is an essential service within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It was impacted by a technical failure that caused a service disruption.
• Exchange Online — Exchange Online is Exchange Server delivered as a cloud service hosted by Microsoft itself. It is built on the same technologies as on-premises Exchange Server.
• OneDrive — OneDrive is an online service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It is included within a suite of productivity software, collaboration, and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft.
• Copilot — Microsoft Copilot is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Microsoft AI. It is based on the Microsoft Prometheus large language model.