What's new for Power Apps in the 2026 Release Wave 1?
This week, Microsoft gave an update for upcoming features in Power Apps related to the 2026 Release Wave 1 plan. This consisted of an online meeting hosted by Stephanie Cronin and Charles Drayton, featuring a very interesting interview with Ryan Cunningham.
What were the key highlights that were mentioned? This post summaries the main themes that were covered. Why use Power Platform in 2026?
With the advent of vibe coding and the simplified development of apps based on AI, where is Microsoft heading with the Power Platform?
To paraphrase Ryan's take, the primary goal of the Power Platform is to shorten the length of time between a person reporting a business need and the implementation of a solution. It aims to provide people with the most powerful tools to solve a problem.
The main opportunity lies in the synergy of utilising the products together. Such as bringing Copilot
into apps, Power Apps, and Dynamics. Another key opportunity is bringing app skills into Copilot.
With so much change happening, the advice for today's makers and developers is to just get started. Start building things now and evolve with them as they go, rather than wait for things to be perfect.
For this release phase, what are the key changes for Power Apps?
Copilot Integration
Copilot Integration is a key feature for this release wave. This includes how Copilot lives directly inside a model-driven app, and has context of what a user is doing within the app. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it also provides built in charting and visualisations.
Integration with Microsoft Work IQ is a strong feature, providing contextual access to emails, meetings, Teams messages, and documents across a Microsoft 365 tenant.
Build Generative Pages with External Code Gen Tools
An exciting development is the ability to build and edit generative pages using external code gen tools like GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Code.This offers a more powerful way to build generative pages, and makes it easier for developers who are already using these tools.
Agent Feed
Agent Feed is another strong feature for 2026. Agent Feed is a built-in supervision inbox for model-driven apps - think of it as a task board for everything your agents are doing, categorised into "Completed" and "Needs Attention." Because every action an agent takes is logged, this ensures that automated processes remain transparent and governed.
Conclusion
This announcement gave an insight as to the upcoming features in Power Apps, and the overall vision and direction of the Power Platform. For further details about upcoming features to Power Apps, the link below provides further details.
