Microsoft has kicked off 2026 with one of the biggest waves of updates we’ve seen across Microsoft 365 and Copilot in some months. From enhanced AI experiences to stronger governance controls and major product evolutions, the roadmap for the year ahead signals a shift toward deeply embedded, agent-driven automation across the Microsoft ecosystem.
Here’s your wrap‑up of what’s new in Microsoft 365 & Copilot as of January 2026 – let’s dive in!
What’s New in Microsoft 365 & Copilot (January 2026)
1. Updated navigation and search capabilities in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app!
Top tip! Yes, the M365 Copilot interface does look a little bit different!
- Updates to the navigation pane include an expanded chat history, chat search, and expanded recent Notebooks list.
- The new Library experience, accessed from the navigation pane, centralizes Copilot-generated content like images and Pages in one location.
- The new Frontier tab in the navigation pane provides an easy access point for frontier experiences like Opal and Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents.
2. Smarter, More Capable Copilot Across M365
Microsoft has continued rolling out richer Copilot capabilities in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Highlights include:
- Advanced PDF analysis, meeting summaries, email drafting, and data visualisation improvements, making Copilot more accurate and context‑aware across workflows.
- Enhanced Copilot Chat features like customisable response depth, automated recurring tasks, file‑grounding, and even AI‑generated video creation.
- Agent Mode in Excel, Agent Mode lets you build and edit workbooks side by side with Copilot, supporting natural language commands for dashboards, sentiment analysis, predictive analytics, and automated reporting.
3. New Copilot Capabilities in Word and Content Creation
Copilot is becoming a true writing partner:
- AI Coaching in Word, offering suggestions on structure, clarity, tone, and logical flow using Copilot in Word.
- Recent prompt memory in Draft with Copilot, and improved recall of memories from Copilot conversations, helping users reuse and refine past prompts. [linkedin.com]
- Agents can now generate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, helping you to create documents, spreadsheets and presentation directly in-chat, and expanding automation possibilities for enterprise workflows.
4. New Copilot Model Selector (GPT‑5)
Microsoft introduced a Model Selector allowing users to toggle between:
- Auto (default)
- Quick Response
- Think Deeper (longer reasoning for more complex tasks)
This gives users more control over Copilot’s reasoning depth.
5. New Copilot Library for All AI‑Generated Content
Users can now access a central Library for all AI‑generated images, summaries, pages, and outputs across devices. This improves discoverability and reuse.
6. New Outlook, Teams & Planner Features
Early 2026 brings a fresh set of improvements across collaboration apps:
- A big Microsoft Planner overhaul, adding task chat, templates, and retiring several legacy features.
- Teams mobile browser selection, letting you choose to open shared links in their device’s default browser.
- Teams private channel expansion (up to 1,000 private channels per team; membership up to 5,000).
7. Customisable AI Disclaimers for Copilot
The AI disclaimer will always remain visible in the user experience. But now your M365 admins can amp up this message and even provide a links to your own documentation: The disclaimer will display bolded text for increased visibility and your staff can be directed to custom URL pointing to their AI policy documentation.
The Year Ahead – What to Expect
2026 is shaping up to be the year Microsoft can guide your organisation to move beyond AI hype and ad-hoc experimentation and start embedding AI as the operating system for work — not as separate tool, but the very fabric that connects your people to their work and to each other’s work across apps, devices, data, and workflows.
For organisations like yours:
- AI skills, leadership and governance maturity will matter more than ever
- Copilot Agents and automation will rapidly expand
- Security, compliance, and endpoint management will be even more essential for safe and productive use
- User experience across M365 apps will continue to be streamlined and feature more AI power-ups.
Book a time with our Microsoft 365 Copilot team for an executive demo to refresh and restart your Microsoft 365 Copilot experience for 2026.
