Global Microsoft outage disrupts services across 74 countries

A major technical disruption hit Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams, Copilot, and Microsoft 365, starting on Thursday, November 12, 2026. The outage impacted government agencies and companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, across at least 74 countries. According to Downdetector, reports of issues with Outlook reached a peak of nearly 140,000 incidents globally. The disruption, which lasted over 12 hours, was attributed by Microsoft to server problems and infrastructure overload caused when some servers unexpectedly went offline.

Microsoft attempted to mitigate the impact by pausing deployments, moving traffic off affected infrastructure, and restarting servers. While initial adjustments did not result in a sustained recovery, the company later reported signs of partial restoration in some regions. This incident marks the second major disruption to Microsoft 365 services this year, prompting concerns about the infrastructure's reliability for corporate clients. Microsoft stated it is continuing to review additional actions to improve overall system stability as services remain partially unstable in some areas, including the Asia-Pacific region.