GitHub

Enterprise Live Migrations (ELM) is now generally available, enabling near-zero-downtime repository migrations from GitHub Enterprise Server to GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Data Residency. ELM syncs data continuously for cutover in minutes, handles massive monorepos, works alongside GitHub Enterprise Importer, and is managed via the gh elm CLI extension. Supports GHES 3.17.18+ and later patch releases.

Copilot's code review now includes an approval assessment in the overview comment for every pull request, and admins can enable it to submit approvals that count toward required-approvals rules. Approvals are off by default and configurable at enterprise, organization, and repository levels, including file-path restrictions.

You can now block or unblock users directly from discussion comments in repositories owned by personal GitHub accounts, matching the blocking controls already available for issue and pull request comments. Use the More menu on a comment to block or unblock with an optional private note.

For Copilot users with seats in more than one organization, model access is now determined solely by the organization that pays for the usage, rather than any org enabling the model. Users billed entirely through an enterprise are unaffected.

VS Code’s August releases (v1.132–v1.135) add side-by-side chat views, /btw side conversations, Markdown rendering in chats, dictation in multiple languages, and support for installing portable agent plugins. Agent Host and browser integrations also gain new capabilities.

Organization and enterprise owners can now publish custom agents for use across repositories, with Visual Studio automatically detecting them in the agent picker. The Git agent can review uncommitted changes and commits inline before opening a pull request, and supported models now offer Low, Medium, and High thinking-effort controls.

Copilot agent sessions can now be started from Slack and Microsoft Teams conversations, and the Customize tab in the Copilot app is generally available, unifying MCP servers, plugins, skills, and canvases. The Copilot CLI now runs on a native Rust runtime for faster performance, adds defaultMode/defaultPermissionMode session defaults, and can restore sessions that did not exit cleanly.

Copilot Chat on github.com, GitHub Mobile, and cloud agent converge into a single experience with unified policy by September 28th, 2026. New seat billing starts September 1st for new customers and October 1st for existing ones, and Copilot code review default effort level changes to Balanced on September 28th.

GitHub Classroom is now deprecated, with its website, APIs, and related services decommissioned as of August 28, 2026. Some Classroom data — classroom and assignment names, tests defined outside of repositories, and LTI integrated rosters — will be permanently deleted per GitHub's data retention policies, while user accounts, repositories, and organizations created to work with Classroom are unaffected.

Starting October 1, 2026, checks, workflow runs, and statuses will be governed by the same Actions retention setting that controls artifact and log retention, with a default of 90 days. Previously retained for 400+ days regardless of configuration, they will now automatically be cleaned up once they exceed your configured retention period, which may reduce billable storage usage for repositories keeping artifacts longer than their setting.

When blocking a user from your personal account or organization, you can opt to automatically close all open issues, discussions, and pull requests they authored, via the Close content authored by this user option in the block dialog.

Enterprise managed settings now accept autoUpdate: true on extraKnownMarketplaces entries, letting supported clients automatically refresh installed plugins from permitted marketplaces. Generally available with Copilot Business and Enterprise in the Copilot app, CLI, and VS Code.

The global default model policy, announced in July, is now generally available and enforcement rolls out gradually through September 1. Previously unconfigured models and new models inherit the policy state; open-weight models (e.g., DeepSeek, Kimi K2) and models without GitHub data retention (e.g., Fable 5) stay disabled by default, while explicit per-model choices are preserved.

Adds retry logic for HTTP requests supporting the Retry-After headerchers, and masks debugger output. Also includes many dependency updates.

Enterprise owners can now grant a GitHub App read or read-and-write access to enterprise billing data via an app installation access token, replacing the need for a personal access token tied to one person. This unlocks usage data retrieval, budget management, and cost-center reconciliation with higher rate limits.