Microsoft services suffer major global outage

On Thursday, November 12, 2026, Microsoft experienced a massive global service outage affecting millions of users across 74 countries. The disruption began with issues accessing Outlook and Exchange Online, but quickly expanded to include Microsoft 365, Teams, OneDrive, and the Copilot AI platform. According to Downdetector, user reports spiked significantly, reaching approximately 140,000 at the peak of the incident, which affected regions ranging from the Americas to Japan, Australia, and the UK.

The company initially confirmed technical difficulties in the Americas before acknowledging a broader structural issue. Microsoft attributed the collapse to an unexpected server failure that led to an overload of its technological infrastructure. The outage persisted for more than eight hours, causing severe disruptions to the daily operations of businesses and individuals relying on these digital tools.

While restoration efforts were underway by early Friday morning, the company struggled to ensure a complete and immediate return to normal functionality. Microsoft technical teams have been working to stabilize connections across all impacted applications, though no definitive timeline for a full resolution was provided as the situation remained fluid.