In early October 2026, Microsoft used Azure Service Health to notify customers of a pricing update for specific Azure Virtual Machine and Azure Storage services, effective February 1, 2027. Six of the seven regions named are in Europe, and the largest increase, 17%, applies to North Europe (Dublin).

If you run production in West Europe, North Europe, France or Norway, this lands in your 2027 budget before most annual planning cycles close. It also lands on the same date that Microsoft’s reservation exchange rules tighten, which changes how you should time any commitment purchases. Our guide to implementing FinOps on Azure with native tools covers the exports, queries and commitment tools you need to respond.

Key takeaways

• From February 1, 2027, prices for affected VM and Storage services rise by 8% to 17% in seven Azure regions, six of them European.
• The notice lists exclusions, not affected SKUs: VM series and storage services that aren’t on the exclusion list should be treated as in scope until Microsoft says otherwise.
• Reservations bought on or after February 1, 2027 can’t be exchanged, so a commitment bought after the increase is both more expensive and less flexible.
• The v1, v2 and listed v7 VM series are excluded from the regional update, but the older series are already on retirement schedules and can no longer get new reservations.
• Do the impact analysis now: find affected resources by region and SKU, reprice your 2027 forecast, and decide on commitments before February.

What changed

The Service Health notice, reproduced by a customer on Microsoft Q&A on October 5, 2026, lists these increases for affected VM and Storage services:

Region	Location	Increase from Feb 1, 2027
North Europe	Dublin	17%
France Central	France	11%
France South	France	11%
West Europe	Amsterdam	9%
Norway East	Norway	9%
Norway West	Norway	9%
Southeast Asia	Singapore	8%

Partners that received the notice report Microsoft’s rationale as alignment of regional price differences and continued investment in infrastructure and capacity. Microsoft has not published the change on its public pricing pages, and the Partner Center announcements for October 2026 don’t mention it, so the Service Health notice in your own tenant is the authoritative version for your subscriptions.

What is excluded

The notice doesn’t list affected SKUs. It lists what is not affected:

• VM series: v1 (Bv1, D, Ds, F, Fs, G, Gs, L, NP, HCS), v2 (Av2, Amv2, Dv2, Dsv2, Fsv2, Lsv2) and v7 (Dsv7, Ddsv7, Dlsv7, Dldsv7, Esv7, Edsv7).
• Storage services: Azure Container Storage, Azure Managed Lustre, Azure NetApp Files cross-region replication, Blob features, Change Feed, General Block Blob, Import/Export, Queues and Queues v2, Standard Page Blob, Storage Actions, Storage Bandwidth, Storage Discovery, Tables and the Transaction Optimized SKU.

A volunteer moderator on Microsoft Q&A read this as “all VM series/SKUs that are not excluded,” which puts the workhorse v4, v5 and v6 D- and E-series in scope. That reading is consistent with the notice, but it isn’t an official Microsoft statement, and the notice itself doesn’t identify which of your subscriptions or resources are affected.

The reservation exchange deadline on the same day

Microsoft’s Reserved VM Instances FAQ states that reservations purchased on or after February 1, 2027 won’t be eligible for exchange, while those bought before that date keep one final exchange. VMs that are deprecated and approaching end of life are excluded from that change. The exchange rule isn’t new, but the overlap matters: a reservation bought in January locks today’s rate and keeps an exit option, while one bought in February does neither.

What it means in practice

Pay-as-you-go is fully exposed

Anything running at pay-as-you-go rates in an affected region simply costs more from February 1. That includes the long tail of non-production VMs, and the managed disks and premium storage behind them, that never made it into a commitment.

Existing reservations, savings plans and negotiated rates

A community answer on Microsoft Q&A states that existing VM reservations keep their price for the full term, and that the new price applies when you buy, renew or let a reservation lapse into pay-as-you-go. That matches how reservations work, but it isn’t an official statement, and the same thread left the savings plan question unanswered. Don’t assume savings plan coverage or enterprise discounts shield you. Ask your Microsoft account team, in writing, how the increase applies to your agreement, your savings plans and any price protection you negotiated.

Older VM series aren’t a safe harbor

The exclusion of v1 and v2 series doesn’t make them a hiding place. Since July 1, 2026, purchases and renewals of reservations are no longer available for these series, so expiring reservations roll to pay-as-you-go or a savings plan. They’re also on Microsoft’s retirement list: Dv2 and Dsv2 retire on May 1, 2028, and Av2, Amv2 and B-series v1 on November 15, 2028. Some partners also report separate pricing changes for older series; check your own Service Health notices rather than relying on secondhand figures.

Moving regions is a compliance decision, not just a cost one

Other European regions aren’t named in the notice, and moving to one of them will look tempting on a spreadsheet. For regulated organizations, it means revisiting data residency commitments, DPIAs, DORA registers of information or NIS2 risk documentation, disaster recovery pairing, latency and the one-off migration and data transfer costs. Treat it as a workload migration with a business case, as we describe in our datacenter migration to Azure guide, and keep any allowed-regions policy in your Azure landing zone in step with the decision.

What to do now

• Find the notice. Check Service Health for each tenant and billing account, and make sure FinOps, procurement and the platform team all have it.
• Build the exposure list. Filter your FOCUS export or cost data by region and service, and use Resource Graph to list VMs by location and size. Drop the excluded series and storage services; the rest is your in-scope spend.
• Reprice the 2027 forecast. Apply the regional percentages to in-scope pay-as-you-go spend from February onward, and to reservations that expire during 2027. Update budgets and anomaly alert baselines so the step change doesn’t read as an anomaly.
• Rightsize first, then commit. Clean up idle and oversized resources before buying, then decide on reservations for stable workloads before February 1, while exchange rights still apply.
• Review storage tiers. Lifecycle management and tier choices matter more when per-GB rates rise. Check which of your storage SKUs are on the exclusion list and which aren’t.
• Plan legacy modernization. Move workloads off v1 and v2 series on your own schedule rather than at the retirement deadline, and size the targets against post-February prices.
• Get answers in writing. Ask your account team or CSP partner how the change applies to your agreement, savings plans and price protection, and whether a list of affected SKUs will follow.

In practice, the teams that come out of this well are the ones that already have FOCUS exports, tagging and commitment reporting in place, because the impact analysis becomes a query rather than a project. If you don’t have that yet, our FinOps overview for AWS and Azure is a good place to start.

Sources

• Clarification Required: Azure VM and Storage Pricing Update from 1 February 2027 – Microsoft Q&A (reproduces the Service Health notice)
• Answer on existing VM reservations and the price change – Microsoft Q&A
• Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances: FAQ on exchanges – Microsoft Azure
• Manage legacy VM reservations after July 1, 2026 – Microsoft Learn
• VM size retirements and capacity restrictions – Microsoft Learn
• October 2026 announcements – Partner Center, Microsoft Learn
• Azure Planning Advisory: Price Adjustments Effective February 2027 – Syscovery
• Azure price hike: European workloads face up to 17 percent price increase – Techzine

Last reviewed: October 2026.