Microsoft 365 Copilot: Updated service plan behavior for Copilot experiences

Microsoft 365 Copilot service plan will simplify control of Copilot experiences, making the service plan the primary determinant of user access to Premium or Basic Copilot features. Rolling out late July to early August 2026, this change improves manageability and consistency without altering licensing.

[What and Why:]

We are simplifying how the Microsoft 365 Copilot service plan controls Copilot experiences to provide a more predictable and manageable admin experience. With this change, the Microsoft Copilot with Graph-grounded chat service plan serves as the primary control determining whether licensed users receive Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium), Copilot Chat (Basic) or Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic) experiences so that it is easier to stage deployments and align with enterprise expectations for manageability and consistency.

[Rollout Schedule:]

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out on late July 2026 and expect to complete by early August 2026.

[Impact on Your Organization:]

Who is affected:

• Admins managing Microsoft 365 Copilot service plans 
• Users assigned a Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial license

What will happen:

• The Copilot service plan will act as a control for Copilot experiences where:
  • Enabled: Licensed users are expected to receive the Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) experience.
  • Disabled: Unlicensed users are not expected to receive Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) experiences and will have access to Copilot Chat (Basic) or Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic) experiences.
• Important to note that Personal Content Mode as described in Microsoft 365 Copilot Personal Content Mode | Microsoft Learn will no longer be activated when the service plan is disabled.
• Users with the service plan disabled will have access to a primarily web-grounded Copilot Chat, with reduced organizational data (Microsoft Graph) grounding in select apps.
• This change improves predictability and consistency of Copilot experiences by reducing scenarios where users may access partial Copilot functionality when the service plan is disabled. There is no change to licensing or SKU configuration; however, the Copilot features available to users may vary based on service plan configuration. The service plan becomes the control for managing Copilot experience access.

[Action Required/Recommendations:]

No immediate action is required, but we recommend that you:

• Review your current Copilot service plan assignments to understand which users may be impacted.
• Reach out to your account team or support if you have questions about this or would prefer to stay on the existing experience until we provide another solution to manage Personal Content Mode.
• Identify users or groups currently relying on Personal Content Mode and plan communications about the upcoming change.
• Update any internal documentation and guidance to reflect the simplified on/off behavior.
• Use your existing service plan management approach to control Copilot access.

Learn more:

• What Copilot license do I have | Microsoft Support
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Privacy and Protections | Microsoft Learn
• Use Copilot Chat in Microsoft 365 apps - Microsoft Support