October 2026
Databricks released these features and improvements in October 2026.
Releases are staged. Your Databricks account might not be updated until a week or more after the initial release date.
Run Lakeflow pipelines as a group
October 5, 2026
You can now set a pipeline's run-as identity to an account group, in addition to a user or a service principal. Pipeline updates run with the group's permissions, so a team can own an automated pipeline without tying it to one person's account. See Set the run-as identity to a group.
OpenJev (Qwen3.5 4B) is now available on Unity Gateway
October 2, 2026
OpenJev (Qwen3.5 4B) is available as a pay-per-token model service. Use the TypeSafe System One API to evaluate yes or no, choice, and scoring questions and get structured answers and probabilities. See model availability by region.
Customers are responsible for ensuring their compliance with applicable model terms.
JDBC Unity Catalog connections are now generally available
October 2, 2026
JDBC Unity Catalog connections are now generally available on serverless compute, Databricks Runtime 19 and above, and SQL warehouses 2025.40 and above, including support for SSL certificates. OAuth M2M authentication remains in Beta. See JDBC connection.
Standard ai_extract now delivers higher-quality extraction
October 2, 2026
The standard (default) mode for ai_extract now uses a new model checkpoint that is 2.3x faster while improving overall quality at no additional cost. See the ai_extract documentation.
Schedule automatic data refresh in the Databricks Excel Add-in (Public Preview)
October 1, 2026
You can now schedule automatic refreshes of Databricks data imported into Microsoft Excel. Choose an interval or calendar schedule and the SQL warehouse that runs each refresh, then review recent runs from the Databricks Excel Add-in. See Schedule automatic data refresh in the Databricks Excel Add-in.
Cross-engine attribute-based access controls (ABAC) is now generally available
October 1, 2026
Cross-engine attribute-based access controls (ABAC) is now generally available. Supported external engines can read Unity Catalog managed tables with ABAC policies, row filters, and column masks enforced by Databricks serverless compute.
See Cross-engine attribute-based access controls (ABAC) for requirements, supported clients, and serverless compute costs.