State of Microsoft 365 · 2026

Everyone's confident. Almost nobody can prove it.

Two independent surveys of the people who actually run Microsoft 365, checked against what Microsoft MVPs see inside real tenants. Every chapter is free to read. No form.

Get your score → Read the key findings

The paradox Confident, and already exposed

Confident Copilot access is appropriate 93%

AI already surfaced data it shouldn't 29%

The distance this report maps

AI governance survey

The thesis

Confidence isn't control.

Ask IT teams whether they're covered and they say yes, emphatically. Ask what actually happened over the last twelve months and a different picture shows up.

The controls meant to make all of this safe depend on the same unfinished work: clean labels, current permissions, and a defensible record of who can reach what. That work is where the gap lives.

Hit a governance incident in the last 12 months 82%

Only find out about issues after the fact 65%

Had a former employee or partner keep access they shouldn't have 38%

IT operations survey

The gap between how covered teams feel and what's happening has a shape. The first chapter maps it.

Read chapter 01 →

The chapters

Seven chapters. Read them in any order.

Contributors

Microsoft MVPs shaped every chapter.

A survey of 1,700+ IT pros tells you what is happening. It doesn't always tell you why. So before we published anything, we took the findings to nine Microsoft MVPs, people who have spent years inside hundreds of tenants. We asked them what sits behind each number. Which findings matched what they see on the ground. Which ones surprised them. And which ones we should be careful about claiming.

We're grateful to all of them for their time, expertise, and candor. Their commentary runs through the whole report.

Microsoft MVP Richard Harbridge
Technology & Ecosystems Strategist at ShareGate
Microsoft MVP Eric Overfield
CIO at Creospark
Microsoft MVP Jasper Oosterveld
Data Security Consultant at Rubicon Cloud Advisor
Microsoft MVP Drew Madelung
MS Cloud Solutions Architect at Protiviti
Microsoft MVP David Drever
Data Protection Specialist at Protiviti
Microsoft MVP Laura Rogers
Power Apps Trainer at IW Mentor
Microsoft MVP Mike Maadarani
CTO at Taiga-Ai
Microsoft MVP Joanne Klein
Microsoft MVP Noorez Khamis

Survey partner

The AI governance survey was fielded through Centiment in March 2026. The IT operations survey was fielded through Cint in May 2026. Both handled panel recruiting, screening, and quality control. We wrote the questions and did the analysis. The full breakdown of who answered is in the methodology below.

Research and analysis

The State of Microsoft 365 2026 was produced by ShareGate's content team.

Methodology

Two surveys. Never blended. Here's exactly what we did.

Different samples, different questions. We keep them apart and label every number with where it came from. Where a finding needs both surveys to make its point, we say so.

What each survey asked, and who answered it

The two studies at a glance

	IT operations survey	AI governance survey
Who answered	943 IT pros	851 IT leaders
Seniority	Manager to VP	Leadership level across IT, security, data governance, digital workplace, and compliance
Sector mix	Broad, across nine sectors	Skews technology
Countries	US · Canada · UK · Germany · Australia · Japan · France	US · UK · France · Canada · Germany · Netherlands · Ireland
Questions	46	35
What it covered	The estate, migration, compliance, cost, and day-to-day governance	Copilot deployment, data exposure, data sovereignty, and AI governance maturity
Fielded	May 2026, via Cint	March 2026, via Centiment
Data granularity	Respondent-level	Respondent-level

Who answered — by country

Both surveys, nine countries — five of them shared

Country	IT operations · n=943	AI governance · n=851
United States	29% · 270	26% · 219
United Kingdom	14% · 135	24% · 204
Canada	14% · 135	12% · 106
Germany	12% · 113	12% · 104
France	10% · 90	13% · 108
Japan	11% · 100	Not fielded
Australia	11% · 100	Not fielded
Netherlands	Not fielded	7% · 56
Ireland	Not fielded	6% · 54

Nine countries across the two surveys, five of them in both. The operations survey reaches into Asia-Pacific; the AI governance survey trades that for more of Europe, which is why data sovereignty findings lean European. Treat any country cut under n=75 — the Netherlands and Ireland — as directional.

Who answered — by organization size

Different bands, so the two are shown side by side

Employees	IT operations · n=943	Employees	AI governance · n=851
1–249	12% · 115	100–249	11% · 96
250–499	14% · 129	250–499	11% · 92
500–999	26% · 249	500–999	23% · 192
1,000–2,999	24% · 230	1,000–2,499	19% · 160
3,000+	23% · 220	2,500–4,999	17% · 148
—	—	5,000–9,999	11% · 91
—	—	Over 10,000	8% · 72

The two surveys used different size bands, so they're shown side by side rather than merged. Both are mid-market and enterprise: roughly three quarters of each sample sits at 500 employees or more. That threshold matters in Chapter 2, where AI licensing pressure jumps eight points at 500 and then flattens out.

Who answered — by industry

Ten sectors, both surveys

Industry	IT operations · n=943	AI governance · n=851
Technology / Software	20% · 190	59% · 500
Manufacturing	17% · 164	12% · 105
Financial Services / Insurance	15% · 138	7% · 56
Retail / E-commerce	12% · 109	4% · 37
Healthcare & Life Sciences	11% · 101	3% · 29
Education	7% · 70	2% · 15
Professional Services	6% · 57	6% · 49
Energy / Utilities	5% · 48	2% · 20
Public Sector / Government	4% · 41	3% · 27
Other or not specified	3% · 25	2% · 13

The operations survey is broadly spread. The AI governance survey is not — nearly six in ten are technology companies, which are typically earlier and heavier adopters. Read its findings as "what AI governance looks like where AI arrived first," and treat any industry cut under n=100 as directional. We flag those in the chapter where they appear.

Who answered — by title

Title in the operations survey, function in the AI governance survey

IT operations · title	n=943	AI governance · function	n=851
Manager	49% · 459	IT leadership	73% · 620
Director	38% · 363	Data governance leadership	9% · 79
VP	10% · 94	Security leadership	9% · 76
Other	3% · 27	Digital workplace leadership	6% · 52
—	—	Compliance / privacy leadership	2% · 13
—	—	Other or not specified	1% · 11

In the operations survey, 83% sit in an IT department, with the rest in security, data governance, digital workplace, or compliance. Everyone in both samples is at manager level or above, which is why this is a report about how Microsoft 365 is run rather than how it feels to use.

Comparing 2026 to 2025

Some findings sit beside our 2025 edition, M365 Decoded. Closely matched questions are labeled clean. Everything else is directional, and flagged as a trend rather than an exact delta.

Where question wording or answer options changed between years, the chapter says so at the point the comparison appears. Where a level dropped across the board because we asked the question differently, we'll tell you to read the ranking instead of the number.

How to cite this

Cite as The State of Microsoft 365: Migration, governance, and the AI reckoning in 2026.

Cite each figure to its own survey — IT operations (n=943) or AI governance (n=851). For the project as a whole, 1,700+ IT pros is right.

How to read it

Four rules the numbers follow.

Self-reported: Every figure is a percentage of the respondents who answered that question.
Unweighted: No adjustment to a target population. Each percentage is a straight count ÷ n.
Multi-select: Questions that allow more than one answer sum past 100% by design.
Never blended: The two surveys are separate samples. There is no combined figure, and every stat names its source.

Some findings are compared against our 2025 report, M365 Decoded. Closely matched questions are labeled clean; the rest are directional and flagged as trends rather than exact deltas. Cite this report as The state of Microsoft 365: Migration, governance, and the AI reckoning in 2026, and cite each figure to its own survey.

Why we ran it again

Last year was the crunch. This year is what the crunch revealed.

Our first report caught IT pros mid-squeeze: SharePoint 2016 and 2019 running out of support, M&A migrations stacking up, and Copilot arriving whether anyone was ready or not.

The pressure hasn't let up. It changed shape. What the crunch exposed is that the assumptions holding governance together had never really been tested — and now they are, continuously, by tools that don't wait for a cleanup project to finish.

What we measured, 2025 to 2026

What we measured	2025	2026
Full Copilot deployment	29%	56%
Any Copilot deployment	82%	93%
No SharePoint 2016/2019 migration plan	29%	4%
Compliance delays or prevents migrations	20%	34%
Purpose-built governance tooling	1%	1%
Name AI governance expertise as a gap	36%	37%

Different samples and, in places, different question wording. Read these as strong directional trends rather than exact deltas. How we compare years →

Download last year's report

The full report

Rather read it all at once?

Every chapter, every chart, and every stat in one file. Useful when you need to send the argument to someone who won't click through seven pages or if you want to upload to your trusty AI tool to help you parse through.

PDF · 7 chapters · 1,700+ IT pros · One email address

Get the report

Where you stand

You've seen everyone else's numbers.

Now get yours. Two scores, your percentile against 1,700+ peers, your widest gaps ranked by how far behind the field they put you, and what actually happened to the teams who answered the way you did.

Get your score →