Databricks releases, every cloud
- Automatic change data feed will soon be available in all supported regions Coming soon
Requires Databricks Runtime 19 or above with row tracking enabled. Replaces manual change data feed setup on tables.
- Data Classification now scans Unity Catalog views (Beta)
Scans Unity Catalog views in addition to tables, using the same detection engine, and is currently in Beta.
- External secrets in Unity Catalog (Beta)
Connects Unity Catalog schema to AWS Secrets Manager, appearing as read-only objects.
- Unity Catalog Skills (Beta)
Publishes and governs agent skills, controlling access with Unity Catalog permissions.
- Context attributes in ABAC column mask and row filter policies (Beta)
Targets request context, such as OAuth client ID and on-behalf-of status, in Unity Catalog policies.
- Identity attributes in ABAC column mask policies (Beta)
Targets users by attributes like department or country, using has_identity_attribute_value and has_identity_attribute_tag_match functions.
- Run the change, do not just read it. Hands-on labs in your own Databricks workspace, graded when you submit. Browse labs
- Tags page in Governance Hub (Beta)
Provides a centralized view of tag usage, summarizes governed tags, and offers recommendations for invalid values. Requires account admins to enable from Previews page.
- Define business concepts with Pages (Beta)
Gives business terms a single governed definition, part of Unity Catalog semantics.
- READ METADATA privilege is GA
Provides read-only visibility into security-sensitive metadata, including privilege grants and ABAC policies.
- Tag automations (Beta)
Assigns or removes governed tags on Unity Catalog tables or volumes based on defined conditions.
- Refresh materialized views and streaming tables without exempting the pipeline owner from ABAC policies
Pipeline owners are now subject to ABAC policies when refreshing views and tables. Policies are evaluated using the pipeline owner's identity.
- Secrets in Unity Catalog is GA
Stores secrets as securable objects with Unity Catalog privileges. Uses catalog.schema.secret namespace.
- Upcoming general availability of Unity Gateway Coming soon
Extends Unity Catalog governance to runtime interactions, controls AI service usage, and monitors traffic. Available by default for workspaces with compliance security profile in mid-September.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Automated setup for S3 external locations
Uses AWS IAM temporary delegation to configure external locations and provision required resources.
- Databricks-hosted sample datasets available in the samples catalog
Available in Unity Catalog-enabled workspaces through OpenSharing as samples.databricks.datasets.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Automatic upgrades will roll out more features to existing tables Coming soon
Adds row tracking and Checkpoint V2 to existing tables.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Govern LLMs in Unity Catalog with model services (Beta)
Represents a governed LLM endpoint, sharable across workspaces via Unity Catalog privileges.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Comments on foreign tables (Beta)
Syncs table and column comments from external data sources to Unity Catalog foreign tables.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Get this table by email. One Monday mail covering the week, filtered to the clouds and products you run. Weekly digest
- ABAC GRANT policies for models (Beta)
Grants EXECUTE privilege on models based on governed tags, supporting MLflow and foundation models.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Column popularity is now available in the Catalog Explorer
Shows column query count in the Overview tab, determined by read queries.
- Cross-engine attribute-based access controls (Beta)
Enforces row filters and column masks server-side for external engines reading Unity Catalog tables.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Tag Unity Catalog functions
Requires Databricks Runtime 18.1 or above. Uses SET TAG and UNSET TAG commands.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Recently Resolved Incidents section in Data Quality Monitoring (Beta)
Shows automatically recovered unhealthy tables, including resolution time.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Language selector for AI-generated comments in Catalog Explorer
Saves selection in browser's local storage, applying to all entity types.
- Create and write to Unity Catalog tables from external Delta clients (Beta)
Requires catalog-managed commits to be enabled, supports Apache Spark clients.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - SQL reference documentation for managing governed tags
Adds 5 SQL statements: CREATE, ALTER, DROP, DESCRIBE, SHOW.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Create alerts for anomaly detection in the Data Quality Monitoring UI (Beta)
Creates notifications for unusual data patterns, available in Beta.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - ABAC policy functions now use snake_case naming
Replaces camelCase with snake_case, old forms still work but will be deprecated.
- Data quality monitoring documentation moved to Data governance (Unity Catalog)
Moved from Data guides to Data governance chapter.
AWS, read it on their docsAzure, read it on their docsGCP, read it on their docsSAP(not on this cloud) - Customer-managed keys for Unity Catalog
Uses own encryption keys for Unity Catalog data. Replaces automatic encryption.
- Customer-managed keys for Unity Catalog (Beta)
Uses own encryption keys for Unity Catalog catalogs. Replaces automatic encryption.
- Discover page and domains (Beta)
Groups data assets by functional area, built on governed tags.
- OneLake catalog federation (Beta)
Allows read-only access to OneLake storage without copying data. Runs queries directly against file storage.
- Improved group sharing for automatic identity management
Shares account-level assets with Microsoft Entra ID groups. Requires automatic identity management.
- New Azure Databricks accounts will not have access to legacy features
Accounts created after December 18, 2025 use Unity Catalog exclusively.
- New Databricks accounts will not have access to legacy features
New accounts use Unity Catalog, lack DBFS root access. Applies to accounts created after December 18, 2025.
- Updated tag search syntax in workspace search
Use tag:<tag_key>:<tag_value> to search by key and value.
- Column drop behavior updated
Fails if column has governed tags, requires removing tags first.
- Zstd is now the default compression for new managed tables
Replaces Snappy compression, applies to Databricks Runtime 16.0 and above.
Headlines, dates and product areas are Databricks' own, from the release notes published for each cloud, and every item links to the note it came from. The one-line summaries are ours. Not a Databricks product and not affiliated with Databricks, Inc.