Microsoft apologises, says global outage ‘not related to cyber or AI/agents’

Microsoft has apologised to customers after a global outage left Teams, Outlook and the AI assistant Copilot inaccessible in at least 70 countries, Joburg Etc reports. The disruption lasted almost 24 hours and affected governments, businesses and personal users.

What Microsoft says caused the outage

In a statement on X on Friday 13 November, the company said it was ‘deeply sorry’ for the disruption and the impact on customers and partners.

Microsoft said the problem was a ‘technical issue not related to cyber or AI/agents’. It explained that the fault came from an earlier network capacity upgrade and surfaced after a recent network change.

We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services.

This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions.

Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.

We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.

Microsoft (@Microsoft) November 13, 2026

The company said it has addressed the underlying issue and continues to restore service to remaining customers and regions. It restored services gradually because of the scale of demand, checking stability at each stage.

Microsoft added that it would publish a full post-incident report once its review is complete.

Recovery still under way

Later on Friday, Microsoft said it was still draining queued messages and rebalancing traffic. Some customers might see improved access, but the company could not say when full recovery would be complete.

Impact around the world

According to BBC News, the outage disrupted NHS England staff. The country’s cyber minister described the incident as ‘inconvenient and disruptive’, with limited reports of impact on frontline services. The outage did not affect 999 calls, NHS 111 services or transport.

In Canada, hospital and rail passengers felt the effects. In the United States, court services and government offices were disrupted. Both countries are now slowly seeing operations return to normal.

A South African winemaker, Peter Pentz, told the BBC the outage halted communication with his exporters and left him unable to process orders to Europe.

A cyber-security adviser told the broadcaster that the global impact would be ‘absolutely massive’ because Microsoft sits at the centre of so many businesses.

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