Databricks lines up five default changes between now and January

Databricks lines up five default changes between now and January

8 November 2026: Databricks has scheduled a run of default changes that will reach most workspaces before the end of January 2027. New jobs compute created in the UI now starts in Auto access mode instead of Dedicated, a beta MCP endpoint for Genie One stops answering on 30 November, and AI Functions in SQL will need Databricks Runtime 17.3 LTS or later from January.

Not yet independently verified. Every date here comes from Databricks' own release notes and its What's coming page, which carries no publication date. The December changes have no day attached yet, and we read only the AWS edition of the documentation. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Jobs compute starts in Auto, not Dedicated

The release note is dated 9 November 2026. When someone creates new jobs compute in the UI, the access mode now defaults to Auto. Auto runs in Standard access mode unless the job picks a machine learning runtime, a GPU instance type, or a Databricks Runtime older than 14.3, in which case it does not. A cluster policy that enforces a different access mode still wins, and existing jobs are not changed.

Databricks stages its releases, and its notes warn that an account may not see a change until a week or more after the date given. Teams that build jobs by hand in the UI, rather than through policies or infrastructure code, are the ones who will notice. A notebook that relied on behaviour only available in Dedicated mode can fail in Standard mode, so a team that has never pinned the access mode in a cluster policy should check what its next new job gets.

Workspaces with the compliance security profile turned on get the same change later, in December 2026. Databricks has not given a day.

Connectors switched on in compliance workspaces

The same December change list goes further for those workspaces. Databricks says its own MCP connectors in Genie One and Genie Code will be enabled by default there, covering Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Atlassian, Slack and GitHub. The connectors let both assistants search documents and data in those services and take actions on a user's behalf, governed through Unity Catalog and Unity Gateway.

For a workspace that turned on the compliance security profile precisely to keep tight control, a connector that arrives switched on is the change to put in front of the security team before December, not after.

Two November dates and a January cut-off

• On or after 26 November 2026: serverless GPU in clean rooms is on by default for accounts on the Enterprise pricing tier. Until then an account admin can turn on Clean Rooms AI Runtime from the Previews page.
• 30 November 2026: the Genie One MCP Beta endpoint at /api/2.0/mcp/genie reaches end of life, and requests to it fail after that date. The date was previously 31 October. Workloads move to the generally available system.ai.genie_one_mcp MCP in Unity Gateway.
• January 2027: AI Functions in SQL queries are no longer supported on Databricks Runtime versions below 17.3 LTS. ai_similarity and the AI Functions REST API are not affected.

Where Databricks sits in our catalogue

We list Databricks as a company and Databricks SQL as one of 30 products in our data warehouse category, alongside Snowflake. The last change on this list falls in January, and Databricks has said the December dates will be given on its What's coming page.

Related on TrustList:

• Databricks variant shredding will lock Runtime 15.4 out of new tables
• Allstate unit Arity agrees to buy traffic data firm INRIX's assets
• DuckDB 1.4 support ends 17 November as 2.0 LTS ships

Sources

• Databricks: November 2026 release notes (New jobs compute defaults to Auto access mode, 9 November; Upcoming removal of AI Functions support on older runtimes, 5 November; read 2026-11-08), 8 November 2026
• Databricks: What's coming (read 2026-11-08), 8 November 2026