14 Much-Needed Microsoft Teams Features Are Coming In 2026

Microsoft Teams is either an app you've rarely ever used and care very little about, or it's one you rely on daily — be it out of preference or corporate obligation. If you belong to the second camp of people, you'll know how frustrating of an experience it can be when things break, calls drop, or the app starts functioning like it's running on early 2000s hardware. Issues like these can be present for a variety of reasons, especially given how complex some organizational setups can be.

Despite its flaws, Teams has managed to crawl up to 320 million monthly active users, in a metric shared by Microsoft in late 2023. This mass use is what fuels the constant under-the-hood changes and feature additions that the service undergoes. A recent example includes an upcoming update that lets you share your location with your boss on Microsoft Teams. Granted, most of these updates aren't exciting or revolutionary, but they do individually contribute to a better digital workspace.

If you do use Teams on a daily basis, you'll be glad to know that Microsoft does take its product seriously and has a beefy feature roadmap planned out for 2026. There are over 60 features in development — some that directly bring improvements for us end users. We've bundled some of the more exciting updates into this read, which focuses on features most regular Microsoft Teams users may actually benefit from.

From summarizing web pages in Edge to quickly rewriting a paragraph in Word, there are several useful ways to use Microsoft Copilot. It's also available in Teams, and upcoming updates plan to harness more use out of the AI assistant. Rolling out in August 2026, Copilot can be used to analyze just about anything shared during a meeting in real-time. This includes content like documents, slides, and spreadsheets that are being screen shared. You can ask Copilot to summarize a particular web page shown during a meeting, or gather insights from an infographic.

Similar to notification summaries, which is one of the more popular Apple Intelligence features, Copilot can now summarize unread chats so you can catch up without having to sit through possibly low-priority messages. This is set to roll out in March 2026. Releasing much earlier in January is a capability that allows you to add SharePoint agents in individual chats and channels. SharePoint agents can be used to perform specific, repetitive tasks, and being able to find and add them through an in-context store in Teams makes the process easier.

Another feature that leverages AI really well is going to be interpreter agent support in Teams. This is rolling out the same month as SharePoint agents and will allow users to listen to meetings in a language of their choice. The translation will happen in real-time, so it shouldn't break the meeting experience.

AI is being integrated into what seems to be every other service — and while it has its uses, what matters more to most people is the quality of audio and video calls that take place on Microsoft Teams. Several additions and quality-of-life improvements are making their way to Teams in February 2026. For starters, a visual network quality indicator will be displayed, which can give users insights and suggestions about how to conserve bandwidth in the event of choppy video calls. Administrators can also soon troubleshoot dropped meetings and calls and gain recommendations for fixes.

If you're constantly moving between buildings or have a hybrid working schedule, Teams will be able to automatically update your work location based on the Wi-Fi network you're connected to. This will save you some effort every time you shift to a new workspace. Moving to additions that are going to bring improvements in the communication experience on Teams — users in a meeting will soon be able to start annotating in a collaborative manner.

If you regularly organize meetings, Teams will allow you to start conversations in the backstage with other organizers and presenters, without clogging up the general chat that is visible to all attendees. Users who rely on keyboard shortcuts for Teams will be glad to know that the service is soon getting slash commands for built-in apps and agents — simply typing the forward slash (/) in a chat will let you interact with apps.

Beyond adding AI-assisted features and improving the calls and meetings experience, Microsoft's roadmap for Teams has a healthy focus on updates targeting workflows, communities, and platform integrations. Those using Viva Engage for their workplace communities and conversations will be glad to know that the service will be baked directly into Teams starting March 2026. This further streamlines the way you connect and hold conversations with your colleagues, and eliminates the need for you to use the dedicated Viva app. Community admins will also appreciate the ability to manage members on the fly via the Teams app on iOS and Android.

If you perform a lot of repetitive tasks, creating workflows for them in Teams can alleviate much of the time that they consume. The Workflows app is being updated to allow for a simpler automation creation process, that takes three steps or less. The feature is already available in preview, but users running the stable release of Teams can expect to see it starting January 2026. If you're switching over from Slack, an upcoming migration tool will allow you to carry your data from both public and private channels to Teams.