Microsoft will terminate existing Office 365 E3 Developer subscriptions. In some legacy cases, these developer subscriptions were renewed free of charge. Some months ago, Microsoft also briefly offered this subscription for free by mistake. All existing Office 365 E3 Developer subscriptions will be canceled in September 2026.
- Microsoft recommends the Microsoft 365 E5 Developer subscription, but the developer program has been restricted since February 2024 and is still unavailable for personal accounts.
- This change does not affect other Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscriptions in the tenant, including any standard production licenses unrelated to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program.
Timeline
The termination is scheduled for Monday, 14 September 2026.
How does this affect your organization?
Users with an active Office 365 E3 Developer subscription (Product ID CFQ7TTC0LF8R) lose access to all associated services once their license is canceled in September 2026, unless they have transitioned to another subscription beforehand.
Before November 2025, organizations could purchase an Office 365 E3 Developer subscription. I found one of my old exports from April 2025 that includes this subscription.
In November 2025, Microsoft offered the Office 365 E3 Developer SKU for free for a short time, apparently by mistake. This free SKU was removed quickly. Microsoft retired this Office 365 E3 Developer SKU in November 2025.
Also, if you have an old tenant, Microsoft offered to connect an Office 365 E3 Developer subscription to an existing M365 tenant. I expect Microsoft will also cancel this old MSDN subscription.
Microsoft should send the billing contact a 90-day prenotification if your tenant is affected by this termination, which should be around 16 June. I am not sure if this 90-day notification is accurate, as the notification timeframe is already in the past. Another way to check is to look for message MC1409038 in your tenant, as this message was published only to affected tenants.
The subscription is no longer available for purchase (as of November 2025). Microsoft does not automatically migrate customers to a replacement subscription.
If your tenant still uses this subscription, complete one of the following before 14 September 2026:
- Transition to a standard Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Suite. This is Microsoft’s recommended path for customers, preserving existing data and workloads.
- Apply to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program for a Microsoft 365 E5 Developer subscription if the tenant is used for development and meets eligibility requirements. Personal accounts are still not eligible for new enrollments (since February 2024).
Eligible people are:- Visual Studio Subscribers (only with an Enterprise Standard or Professional Standard subscription).
- ISV Success Program Members
- Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program Participants
- Government clouds
- Premier or Unified Support Plan Members
Contact your Microsoft Premier contact or CSAM, but expect they are not familiar with the Microsoft 365 Developer Program; send them the Microsoft Learn link and ask how to proceed. Users from Premier customer organizations should receive a developer program invitation to their organizational account within the next 21 days, not to their personal Microsoft accounts. The Microsoft 365 Developer Program is connected to the organizational account.
- Migrate development workloads to a supported environment. A developer tenant is not a supported environment.
