Microsoft restores services after global outage affects 70 countries and territories

Microsoft announced that its core digital services, including Teams, Outlook, and Copilot, were fully restored on Saturday, November 14, 2026. The global outage lasted for more than 24 hours, causing significant disruption to users in over 70 countries and territories. The technical disruption began around midday Thursday in the United States and impacted various sectors including government, finance, and healthcare across Asia, Europe, the United States, and Australia.

Cause of the disruption

Microsoft identified the cause of the outage as a technical issue that occurred during a network capacity upgrade following a recent network change. The company stated that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack or artificial intelligence agents. Despite the scale of the disruption, the impact varied across different sectors and regions.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) and the Metropolitan Police in London experienced service disruptions. However, the Metropolitan Police reported that their ability to receive reports was not disrupted during the event. The outage also affected operations in Japan and Singapore. According to various reports, the disruption caused delays in financial operations and caused delays in announcing company results. Additionally, the outage affected airlines and courts. One report noted that the outage caused office workers to feel like they were having a virtual snow day.

Scale of the impact

The scale of the event was reflected in data from Downdetector, which received more than 7.4 million outage reports globally. At the height of the disruption, Downdetector reported a peak of approximately 20,000 reports per minute. The outage affected a massive user base, as Microsoft stated that over 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps.

Jeremy Singer, a Professor at the University of Glasgow's School of Computing Science, noted the implications of such an event. "The outage highlights the heavy dependence on a single company's digital infrastructure and the need for IT ecosystem resilience," Jeremy Singer said.

Broader implications

The widespread nature of the outage has highlighted the risks associated with overreliance on American technology providers. As digital infrastructure becomes increasingly centralized, the stability of a single provider can have cascading effects on global commerce, public safety, and essential services. The incident serves as a significant case study for the necessity of building more resilient IT ecosystems to mitigate the impact of technical failures in critical cloud services.

Glossary

• National Health Service (NHS) — The National Health Service (NHS) is the collective term for the four separate publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom. These include the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern Ireland).
• Microsoft 365 — Microsoft 365 is a suite of applications and services that includes various apps and features like Copilot. It is used by a massive user base for work, business, and education purposes.
• Downdetector — Downdetector is a service that shows reports of outages for various platforms. It can track the scale of a disruption by receiving outage reports globally.
• cloud services — Cloud services are IT services that can be impacted by technical failures. They are part of the critical IT ecosystem.