Releasesby GlyphVariant will soon be available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled
Variant will be available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled in July 2026. Use Variant to ingest semi-structured data from streaming sources (Kinesis, Event Hub), REST APIs, and schemaless databases, while maintaining high-performance query access. See Variant type support for Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake .
Also shipped Jul 22, 2026Databricks in July 2026 →
External OAuth and configurable scopes for MCP servers (General availability)
Two new hierarchical parameters let you bind MCP servers to your organization’s existing identity provider (IdP) and control which OAuth scopes MCP clients discover. This enables MCP clients such as Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT to authenticate against your corporate IdP instead of Snowflake OAuth.
OpenAI API adds hard spend limits for organizations and projects
A monthly cap makes affected API requests return 429 once tracked spend reaches the limit. Spend alerts can warn before traffic is interrupted.
AI Gateway now supports streaming transcription
AI Gateway now supports streaming transcription . Previously, transcription required a complete audio file and returned the full transcript in a single response. Now you can stream audio in as it's captured and get transcript updates back as the model produces them, keeping latency low for uses like live captioning and voice input.
Extension version pinning in CREATE or ALTER EXTENSION deprecated
Specifying an explicit version in CREATE or ALTER EXTENSION is deprecated. From 2026-08-05 the version clause is ignored and the extension's default version is installed, with a warning.
Transcription on OpenRouter
OpenRouter has introduced an audio transcription API at /api/v1/audio/transcriptions, supporting base64 audio input and returning JSON text.
Volumetric Policies for Adaptive Traces are Generally Available
Cost-effectively get the right representative mix of traces with volumetric policies! Now Generally Available, volumetric policies intelligently balance cost, service representation, and value to automagically give you the right traces. We’ve bolstered volumetric policies under the hood to be even more cost predictable.
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Variant and Variant shredding are now generally available
Variant is now generally available . Variant is a flexible data type for semi-structured data that delivers structured-like query performance through Variant shredding, which is also generally available.
Transactions are now generally available
Transactions that write to Unity Catalog managed Delta tables are now generally available. Group multiple SQL statements across one or more tables into a single atomic transaction using BEGIN ATOMIC ... END; or BEGIN TRANSACTION; ... COMMIT; syntax. All changes succeed together or roll back together, ensuring data consistency across your operations.
Email notifications for expiring service principal tokens are now generally available
Databricks now automatically sends an email notification when a service principal token is set to expire within seven days. Because service principals don't have their own mailboxes, Databricks sends these notifications to workspace admins.
Databricks Runtime 19 and Databricks Runtime 19 for Machine Learning are now generally available
Databricks Runtime 19 and Databricks Runtime 19 for Machine Learning are now generally available (GA), powered by Apache Spark 4.2.0. For release notes, see Databricks Runtime 19 and Databricks Runtime 19 for Machine Learning .
Databricks Runtime 18 and Databricks Runtime 18 for Machine Learning have transitioned to LTS
With the general availability of Databricks Runtime 19, Databricks Runtime 18 and Databricks Runtime 18 for Machine Learning have transitioned to long-term support (LTS). LTS versions receive three years of stability and security fixes. For release notes, see Databricks Runtime 18 LTS and Databricks Runtime 18 LTS for Machine Learning .
Databricks Runtime 19: July 23, 2026
Databricks Runtime 19 is now generally available (GA). For lifecycle details, see Databricks Runtime support lifecycles . Behavioral changes Arrow-optimized Python UDFs enabled by default : Regular Python UDFs now use Arrow-based serialization by default. This can change type-coercion behavior for some UDFs compared to previous releases.
Context-based ingress control for workspaces public access is now generally available
Context-based ingress control for workspaces public access is now generally available. Control who can reach your workspace endpoints using allow and deny rules that allow you to combine identities, network sources, and request types. See Context-based ingress control .
Dedicated group clusters will soon be available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled
Dedicated group clusters will be available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled in September 2026. You can assign a compute resource to a group using the Dedicated access mode, letting group members share compute while securely running languages and workloads not supported by standard access mode, such as Databricks Runtime...