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Fri, 13 Nov 2026

Fri, 13 Nov 2026 Microsoft 'deeply sorry' for global outage as it reports broad recovery

Experts say the event is a "stark reminder" of how heavily the world relies on a small group of big tech providers.

* Microsoft's services, including Outlook and Teams, were down for much of Friday due to a technical issue introduced during a "network capacity upgrade".
* The outage affected over 70 countries and more than 430 million people worldwide.
* Services were gradually recovering by Friday afternoon, but Microsoft did not provide an estimated time for when they would be fully restored.
* The outage disrupted business operations, government services, and personal users, with institutions such as the Japanese government, Philippine Supreme Court, and Australian spy agency affected.
* Users in various countries reported issues accessing email and other Microsoft 365 products, including: + UK: NHS services, schools, police forces, and some courts were affected + Canada: National rail network passengers may not receive email updates about their trips + US: House of Representatives staff members said the outage set back an entire day of legislative work + Singapore: Government systems were impacted + India: Disrupted work for many on Friday + Turkey: Climate summit attendees were unable to access Outlook
* Microsoft apologized for the disruption and acknowledged that it was a "stark reminder" of how heavily businesses and vital services rely on big tech providers.
* Experts said that organizations must have plans in place for working without cloud-based services when incidents like this occur.