New Microsoft's Latest Partner Incentives for FY26

Microsoft firmly believes in the power of its partner ecosystem to drive value, both for its partners and, crucially, for customers. In an exciting development for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26), Microsoft is increasing its overall investment in partners to the highest it's ever been. This substantial commitment underscores the company's belief that partners are the key to unlocking the tremendous market opportunity and delivering exceptional customer outcomes.

The incentive portfolio is thoughtfully designed to accelerate partner success, enabling growth, fostering solution-focused wins, and maximizing customer value. By strategically optimizing investments across all customer segments—SMB, corporate, majors, and enterprise Microsoft ensures that offerings are tailored to meet unique market needs. This strategy empowers partners to deliver value precisely where it matters most, particularly as they inspire, design, and help customers realize the full potential of their solutions.

Table of Contents

• The Philosophy Behind Microsoft's Incentives

• CSP: The Hero Motion for Partner Growth

• Detailed Investments Across Cloud Solution Areas

• Partner Voices: Reinvesting for Success

• Empowering Partners with Innovation: The Partner Center AI Assistant

• Conclusion: A Transformative Opportunity

Key Takeaways

• Record Investment: Microsoft's investment in partners for FY26 is the highest it's ever been, demonstrating a strong commitment to ecosystem growth.

• Strategic Alignment: Incentives are designed to foster growth, solution-focused wins, and maximize customer value, aligned with Microsoft's five strategic priorities and three cloud solution areas.

• CSP as Hero Motion: CSP is Microsoft's priority partner motion, with incentives for FY26 being "bigger than ever" and designed for predictability, profitability, and customer value. A refined CSP model starts October 2025, rewarding all types of customer growth.

• Major Cloud Solution Area Increases:

• AI Business Solutions (Copilot & M365): 50% year-over-year increase in Copilot investment, unified into "Copilot Plus Power Accelerate," alongside double-digit growth investments for core M365.

  • Cloud and AI Platforms (Azure): A staggering 70% year-over-year increase in Azure outcome-based investment, unified under "Azure Accelerate" to fuel cloud and AI transformation.

  • Security: Continued strong commitment with new offerings, parity in workshop payouts, and new deployment accelerators for E5 security and compliance suites, all streamlined within the MCI platform.

• Innovation for Efficiency: The new Partner Center AI Assistant helps partners save time, speed up payouts, and maximize incentives by streamlining inquiries, co-op management, and deadline monitoring.

The Philosophy Behind Microsoft's Partner Incentives

The core philosophy behind Microsoft's incentives portfolio is deeply rooted in enabling partner growth, helping achieve solution-focused wins, and ultimately maximizing customer value. This approach builds on the robust growth seen in the previous year, with an evolved investment strategy focused on impactful customer engagement. Microsoft's investments are strategically aligned with its five strategic priorities and three cloud solution areas, ensuring a coherent and impactful approach. The commitment to these priorities remains unchanged, with a continued and even increased material investment across each.

This year's investment is characterized by a "hyper-focused mindset" aimed at seizing the exciting opportunities ahead. Whether it's embracing Copilot, migrating on-premises workloads to Azure, activating innovative AI solutions, or delivering robust cybersecurity, partners have laid a strong foundation for the immense opportunities that lie ahead.

CSP: The Hero Motion for Partner Growth

The Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is unequivocally Microsoft's strongest and "hero" partner motion, positioned as the leading approach for engaging in the SM&C (Small, Medium, and Corporate) space. For FY26, CSP incentives are "bigger than ever before," offering significant earning potential and reinforcing CSP as the best pathway to deepen customer relationships and unlock new growth scenarios.

These incentives have been meticulously designed with partners in mind, focusing on predictability, profitability, and true customer value. Microsoft is significantly increasing overall investments in the CSP portfolio, augmenting the breadth and depth of its offerings, and fine-tuning rates to ensure both partner competitiveness and profitability.

Starting in October 2025, a refined CSP model will be introduced, consisting of three key levers:

• Core rates: Providing a foundational payout for all transacted products.

• Accelerator: Boosting payouts for the most strategic products.

• Customer growth lever: Rewarding new customers, new workloads, and incremental seats for existing customers.

Microsoft emphasizes that "all growth is good growth," and the model is specifically designed to reward growth by customer, providing partners with the predictability needed for their sellers to achieve more. This balanced design promotes sustainable customer engagements and increases lifetime value while keeping partner profitability at the forefront. As an example, a CSP deal involving a customer renewing with 2,000 seats and upselling from ME3 to ME5 could see a 14% increase in incentives over the previous year due to this updated structure.

Detailed Investments Across Cloud Solution Areas

Microsoft's investments for FY26 are strategically aligned across its key cloud solution areas, with significant increases designed to drive specific outcomes.

AI Business Solutions (Copilot & M365 Growth)

The role of partners in transforming businesses with AI, particularly through Copilot, is crucial. Microsoft is making a 50% year-over-year increase in investment in driving Copilot solutions. This includes consolidating Copilot agent and low-code investments into a unified offering called "Copilot Plus Power Accelerate". This initiative empowers both Modern Work and Business Application partners to drive customer AI transformation.

Key engagement types supported include:

• Copilot immersion briefings: One-to-many engagements that build purchase intent.

• Envisioning and proof of concept workshops: One-to-one engagements that showcase product capabilities, identify scenarios, and develop implementation roadmaps.

• Copilot Deployment Accelerator: A program that co-invests in deployment and adoption to accelerate customer time to value.

Beyond Copilot, Microsoft is also continuing to increase investments to drive core M365 growth by double digits this year. This includes continued investment in M365 Accelerate and the addition of new M365 ME3 MEI deployment accelerators for CSP partners, ensuring scaled investments across customer segments to drive M365 sales and deployments. With these investments, partners have the potential for significant earnings. For instance, a new CSP customer with 2,000 ME5 seats and 1,000 Copilot seats could lead to earnings of up to $366,000 across the customer journey, covering all investments.

Cloud and AI Platforms (Azure Transformation)

Microsoft is significantly prioritizing partners who migrate on-premises applications to the cloud and those driving innovative cloud-based AI-enabled solutions. This commitment is reflected in a staggering 70% year-over-year increase in Azure outcome-based investment.

A major new offering is "Azure Accelerate," a unified and simplified program that brings together Azure Migrate and Modernize, Azure Innovate, and Cloud Accelerate Factory. Azure Accelerate provides rich cash incentives, experts, and resources to support successful migrations and deployments, covering every aspect of the customer journey from migration and innovation to modernization and execution excellence.

• Opportunities under $500,000 of Azure consumed revenue are partner-led.

• Larger customer scenarios receive dedicated Microsoft support through field nominations.

Partners can earn more per engagement across key solution plays, including:

• Migrate and Modernize: Covering core migration and SAP migration scenarios.

• Unified Data Platform.

• Innovate with Azure AI apps and agents.

Examples of earning potential include up to $175,000 for an AVS (Azure VMware Solution) migration and deployment engagement. For software development companies and digital natives, there are cash incentives of up to $100,000 to build and publish AI apps and up to $175,000 for end-customer migrations. In a scenario involving the deployment of a new specialized Azure VM solution with $500,000 of Azure consumed revenue, partners can earn up to $300,000 by combining Azure Accelerate and FY26 CSP Azure incentives.

Security (Paramount to All)

Cybersecurity is paramount for partners, customers, and Microsoft alike, especially in today's ever-changing landscape. Microsoft's commitment to accelerating security growth continues to be stronger than ever. Investments persist in modern security operations, data security, and threat protection, with a new cloud security offering introduced for all customer segments. These investments align with three key security solution plays: modern security operations with a unified platform, data security, and protecting cloud AI platforms and applications.

Key updates include:

• Parity in payouts for workshops offered to all customer segments.

• Continued Security Accelerate investments for CSP.

• Sentinel Migrate and Modernize will evolve into Sentinel Accelerator starting in October to drive usage and reach injection thresholds with customers.

• Addition of deployment accelerators for E5 security and E5 compliance mini suites to drive customer value through co-investment in deployment and adoption.

To streamline the partner experience, the enrollment and payment for all security investments will be integrated within the MCI platform in FY26, and proof of execution requirements will be reduced across all solution areas. A powerful example of earning potential is the opportunity to earn $464,000 by driving the deployment of M365 ME5 for a new CSP customer, covering all associated investments.

Richard Dornhart, Practice Lead for Security at Data 3, highlights how programs like CSP Accelerate, which focus on attaching E5 and Azure security to CSP, represent "services opportunities" that drive the adoption and consumption of technology. He views these programs as integral to delivering value for the customer.

Empowering Partners with Innovation: The Partner Center AI Assistant

To further empower partners and streamline their operations, Microsoft is investing in innovation within the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. A significant new tool is the Partner Center AI Assistant, designed to help partners save time, speed up payouts, and maximize their incentives.

This intelligent assistant offers a wide range of functionalities within the incentives workspace:

• Inquiry Support: It can answer questions about workshops, SEPOR, and co-op claims, saving valuable time with ready-to-use prompts.

• Co-op Management: Partners can instantly check their co-op balance, claimed amounts, and claim status through a quick chat.

• Deadline Monitoring: It provides summaries of completed activities and monitors auto-approval amounts tied to a partner ID for customer claims, helping partners stay ahead of Proof of Execution (PoE) deadlines and quickly spot where action is needed to avoid denials or expirations.

• Pre-sales Support: The AI assistant can assist with pre-sales inquiries, such as finding eligible workshops or investigating ineligibility, directly from the incentives library.

The Partner Center AI Assistant is a testament to Microsoft's commitment to enabling partners to get more from their partnership by saving time, accelerating payouts, and unlocking more value.

Conclusion: A Transformative Opportunity

Microsoft's broad incentive portfolio provides rich earning opportunities for partners across the entire customer lifecycle. The investment in partners is truly "bigger than ever," with over 70% of the portfolio continuing to focus on the C segment, giving partners confidence to bet their business on this segment.

To capitalize on this unprecedented opportunity, partners are encouraged to align their business strategy to Microsoft's priorities to unlock significant earnings. The most successful partners understand that investing their incentives back into their businesses is key to transformation and accelerated growth. With a great market opportunity ahead for driving AI transformation and gaining share by bringing new customers into the collective ecosystem, Microsoft and its partners are poised for an impactful year together.