On 5th November 2026, Microsoft announced significant changes to their licensing offering for M365 Education, which will have a major impact on educational institutions worldwide.
In summary, the following will no longer be available:
- Office 365 A1
- Student Use Benefit (SUB)
- Free Alumni Mailboxes for Exchange Online
The pooled storage introduced in August 2024 is also changing.
Back then, Microsoft gave each tenant 100TB as base storage across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, and an additional 50GB/100GB per A3/A5 faculty license.
Pooled storage will now only be based on each license purchased. In some cases this will increase the pooled storage available as the per-seat allowance is significantly more for A3/A5. But expect to also have a paid license per student.
Below are the new tiers:
Microsoft have provided additional details and and a FAQs page explaining all of these changes.
Overall, this isn’t good news for the education sector which is already experiencing financial difficulties and budget constraints. Schools, colleges and universities can expect a significant increase in licensing costs from next year onwards.
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