Which Microsoft certifications are retiring in 2026?

An honest, cited answer. We make no ROI, salary, placement, or 'worth it' claim, and we don't track live job demand — where we don't know, we say so.

We read Microsoft's own certification pages on 2026-07-30 and found three carrying a retirement notice, all three linking the same Microsoft announcement:

Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-102) — its page already said this on 2026-07-30:

This certification and the renewal assessment are retired.

Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204) — the page says:

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

Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500) — same wording, later date:

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

Read the wording carefully, because it is broader than the usual notice that an exam is being updated. It covers the certification, the exam and the renewal assessment, and it says you will no longer be able to earn or renew.

What we checked that is NOT retiring

A negative is worth as much as a positive here, so: on the same date, these Microsoft certification pages carried no retirement notice at all — Azure Administrator (AZ-104), Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305), DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400), Azure Network Engineer Associate (AZ-700), Identity and Access Administrator (SC-300), Security Operations Analyst (SC-200), Security Compliance and Identity Fundamentals (SC-900), Azure Database Administrator (DP-300) and Power BI Data Analyst (PL-300).

So this is a narrow, staged set rather than a sweep of the Azure portfolio.

Why this is hard to find out

Both of the already-retired pages we looked at carry an instruction asking search engines to leave them out of results. The retirement notice is right there on the page — but the page itself stops turning up in searches, so the most obvious way to go looking is the way least likely to work.

What we don't know

We checked fourteen Microsoft certification pages, not Microsoft's whole catalogue, so a certification we did not check could carry a notice we have not seen. The announcement all three link to is a JavaScript page that would not load for us, so we cannot tell you whether it names a longer list than the three we found on the certification pages themselves. And none of the three notices names a replacement credential — we are not going to guess which certification is closest. Everything here describes what those pages said on 2026-07-30.

Related

• Is the AZ-500 certification retiring?
• What changed recently across certifications

Sources

• Microsoft - Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204), read 2026-07-30: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/azure-developer/
• Microsoft - Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500), read 2026-07-30: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/azure-security-engineer/
• Microsoft - Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-102), read 2026-07-30: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/azure-ai-engineer/

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