Releasesby GlyphAutomated setup for S3 external locations
You can now create an S3 external location using automated setup, the recommended method for connecting an S3 bucket to Databricks. Automated setup uses AWS IAM temporary delegation to configure your external location and provision all required resources, including the IAM role, storage credential, and external location.
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.
More from Unity CatalogEvery Unity Catalog release →
Databricks-hosted sample datasets available in the samples catalog
The sample datasets /databricks-datasets mounted to DBFS are now also available in the samples catalog as samples.databricks.datasets , made available through OpenSharing. The datasets volume hosts a collection of Databricks-provided datasets that you can use to build and test data pipelines.
Role-based access control (RBAC) is in Public Preview
Role-based access control (RBAC) is now in Public Preview. RBAC lets users assume a role in Databricks using only that role's permissions for the duration of the session instead of their own accumulated permissions. This enables exclusive access.
Governance Hub is in Beta
Governance Hub is in Beta . Governance Hub is a centralized, account-level UI in the account console for monitoring governance across your Databricks account. It provides a unified view of data health and coverage, AI usage and spend, and cost drivers, with prioritized insights and recommendations. All views respect existing permissions.
Governed tags system table is in Beta
The system.tags.governed_tags system table is in Beta . This table contains a record for each governed tag key in your account, including customer-created and system-generated tags. Use it to programmatically determine which tags in your account are governed. See Governed tags system table reference .
Unity Catalog OSS UnityCatalog 0.5.1
We are pleased to announce the Unity Catalog 0.5.1 release, a patch release focused on credential-caching reliability and performance, plus authorization fixes for permission APIs. A huge thank you to the awesome community who made this release possible!
Python UDTFs in Unity Catalog are now generally available
Registering Python user-defined table functions (UDTFs) in Unity Catalog is now generally available in Databricks Runtime 18. A Unity Catalog Python UDTF is a governed function that returns a table, invoked in the FROM clause of a SQL statement to return multiple rows and columns.
Scala and Java UDFs in Unity Catalog are now generally available
Register Scala and Java user-defined functions (UDFs) in Unity Catalog and reuse them across notebooks, jobs, and SQL warehouses with Unity Catalog governance. Reuse existing JVM logic and get better performance than Python UDFs on all compute, including serverless. See Scala and Java user-defined functions (UDFs) in Unity Catalog .
Data Classification is now available by default for additional compliance standards
Data Classification is now available by default for workspaces with the compliance security profile enabled and either C5, TISAX, or IRAP controls selected.