Microsoft Certifications Retiring in 2026, and What Replaces Each One

Microsoft certifications retiring between June and November 2026, the exam that replaces each one, and what happens to a credential you already hold.

6 Microsoft certifications retire between June and November 2026. Here is the date for each, the exam Microsoft names as its replacement, and what happens to a credential you already hold.

If you are studying for AZ-500 right now, you have until August 31, 2026. If you already hold it, you will keep it for a year and then lose it permanently, and there is nothing you can do to stop that.

Microsoft certifications retiring this year come in two waves, and the information you need is split across three different Microsoft properties: the dates are on one page, the replacements are buried in a partner-program announcement, and the consequences for a credential you already earned are in a third place entirely. This post puts all three together, with the source for each.

The Microsoft certifications retiring between June and November 2026:

Microsoft's own framing is that it "is retiring multiple certifications between June 30 and August 31, 2026, as part of evolving certification requirements for AI-related skills."

Certification	Exam	Retirement date	Status
Azure Data Scientist Associate	DP-100	June 1, 2026	retired
Azure AI Engineer Associate	AI-102	June 30, 2026	retired
Dynamics 365 Field Service Functional Consultant Associate	MB-240	June 30, 2026	retired
Azure Developer Associate	AZ-204	July 31, 2026	retired
Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Analyst Associate	MB-280	July 31, 2026	retired
Azure Security Engineer Associate	AZ-500	August 31, 2026	retiring now
Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate	PL-200	August 31, 2026	retiring now
Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert	MS-102	November 30, 2026	scheduled

The wording on the AZ-500 certification page is worth reading exactly as written, because one phrase in it does a lot of work:

This certification, related exam, and renewal assessments will be retired on August 31, 2026. You will no longer be able to earn or renew this certification after this date.

Not just the exam. The renewal assessments too. More on why that matters below.

Every retirement with a named replacement:

This is the part that is genuinely hard to find. The certification pages carry a retirement warning that names no successor and links to a blog post that does not render without JavaScript. The actual mapping lives in Microsoft's Partner Center announcements, filed under partner program administration, which is not somewhere a candidate would ever think to look.

Retiring	Replaced by	Replacement available since
Azure Data Scientist Associate (DP-100)	Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) Engineer Associate (AI-300)	May 12, 2026
Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-102)	Azure AI Apps and Agents Developer Associate (AI-103)	June 19, 2026
Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204)	Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate (AI-200)	July 9, 2026
Dynamics 365 Customer Experience Analyst Associate (MB-280)	Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant Associate (AB-210)	July 9, 2026
Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500)	Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate (SC-500)	July 21, 2026
Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate (PL-200)	Intelligent Applications Builder Associate (AB-410)	July 30, 2026

One retirement has no direct replacement: Dynamics 365 Field Service Functional Consultant Associate (MB-240) retired on June 30, 2026, and Microsoft describes AB-250 as "not a direct replacement" but as a certification "being added to account for this retirement." If you were working toward MB-240, that distinction matters: you are changing direction, not upgrading.

Three things follow from that table:

There is no automatic transition: Holding AZ-500 does not get you SC-500. The replacement is a different certification with a different exam, and you earn it by passing that exam.
The replacements are all AI-shaped: Every named successor moves the role toward building, securing or operating AI systems. SC-500 extends the security engineer role to cloud and AI workload protection; AI-200 turns the Azure developer track toward AI cloud solutions. This is a direction, not a rebrand, and the new syllabus will contain material the old one never covered.
The successors are new: AI-300 is the oldest of them and it became available in May. That has a practical consequence covered at the end of this post.

We publish full-length practice exams for four of the six replacements, written against the current published objectives: AI-300, AI-103, AI-200 and SC-500 and worth reading “MD-102 exam topics” for you to get clarified on it.

What happens to a certification you already hold:

Nothing, immediately. Then something, quietly.

Microsoft's credential retirement page states the rule:

If you earned or renewed a Certification before it was retired, it will remain on your transcript in the Active Certifications section until it expires. Once the Certification expires, it will move the Historical Certifications section of your transcript.

And the Partner Center announcement puts a number on it: "If you complete a retiring certification before its retirement date, your certification remains valid for one year."

So, a credential you hold on to the retirement date does not vanish. It sits in Active until its own expiry date, which is up to a year out, and then moves to Historical. It stays on your transcript either way - Historical is a section, not a deletion - but it is no longer a current credential, and anyone checking your profile can see which section it is in.

Practically:

Earn it before the date and you get a full year. If you are close, finishing is usually the right call.
Your transcript keeps the record forever. Nobody takes the achievement away.
After expiry it is historical, not current. For a job application, a partner requirement or a compliance checklist, that distinction is the one that counts.

The renewal trap:

This is the part almost nobody spells out, and it follows from two facts that are true individually and unpleasant together.

Fact one: Microsoft role-based certifications expire every year. They are renewed by passing a free, unproctored, open-book assessment on Microsoft Learn, inside a six-month window before expiry, with as many attempts as you need. Renewal is genuinely easy, and for most people it is a background task. Only Fundamentals certifications are exempt, because they do not expire at all.

Fact two: the renewal assessment retires with the certification. The AZ-500 warning says the certification, the exam and the renewal assessments all retire on August 31, and that you will no longer be able to earn "or renew" it.

Put those together and the annual renewal you have relied on stops being available. There is no assessment to pass. The certification runs to its expiry date and moves to Historical, and no amount of studying changes that outcome - this is the one case where the renewal treadmill has no next step.

If a current credential in that role area matters to you, the replacement exam is not optional, and it is not urgent in a year. It is the only route.

If you are studying for one of these right now:

The decision splits cleanly, and it depends on one thing: how close you are.

Close enough to sit it before the date? Sit it. You get the credential and a year of validity, and that year is time to prepare for the successor without pressure.
Not close, and the exam retires within weeks? Switch now. Study time spent on a syllabus that closes in three weeks buys you a credential you will hold briefly, and the replacement exam covers a superset of what you would have learned anyway.
Already hold the retiring certification? Note your own expiry date, then plan the replacement exam to land before it. That keeps you continuously current rather than lapsing and re-earning.
Working toward MB-240? Read the AB-250 objectives before assuming your preparation carries over. Microsoft is explicit that it is not a direct replacement.

One warning about the switch, and it is the reason this matters more than a normal exam change. A brand-new exam has thin preparation material. The successors here range from three months old to five weeks old. Third-party question sets take time to appear and longer to become accurate, and a new exam often has no free practice assessment on Microsoft Learn yet - so the usual free first step may not exist for the exam you are switching to.

That is the situation where a full-length paper written against the current published objectives does the most work, because there is very little else. The practice exam catalog covers the four successors listed above alongside the established Microsoft and CompTIA tracks, and our FAQ explains how the per-domain scoring works.

Before you act on any of this, check the two pages it came from - retirement schedules do change, and both are updated in place rather than reissued. Microsoft's credential retirement page carries the dates and the transcript rule, and the July 2026 Partner Center announcements carry the replacement mapping. The certification renewal page is worth a bookmark whether any of this affects you.

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