Microsoft has confirmed a global outage affecting millions of users worldwide. The company reported it is investigating a possible DNS system issue, which has caused disruptions in several of its services and in third-party platforms that depend on its infrastructure, including Minecraft and Xbox.
What’s happening with Microsoft and why it went down
According to initial reports, the failure began around 4:40 p.m. Spanish peninsular time, when thousands of users started experiencing connection issues in key company services.
Microsoft explained that the origin of the incident could be related to DNS servers, responsible for translating web addresses into IP addresses so that applications and websites can function correctly. When this system fails, services stop responding, causing simultaneous outages across multiple platforms.
The company confirmed on its support page that it has launched an investigation to determine the exact causes of the issue and restore services as soon as possible.
Services and applications affected
The Microsoft global outage is impacting several of its most widely used products worldwide, as well as platforms that depend on its cloud, Microsoft Azure, one of the largest digital infrastructures on the planet.
Among the most affected services are:
- Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming service, which has suffered interruptions and disconnections.
- Minecraft and PUBG Battlegrounds, titles that require a permanent internet connection, have reported access errors.
- Microsoft 365, which includes essential tools like Word, OneDrive, Outlook and Copilot, is also experiencing issues logging in or accessing files.
According to Downdetector, incidents have been reported from different parts of the world, confirming that this is a global disruption and not a localized one.
Microsoft Azure cloud at the center of the issue
The company stated that the failure directly affects Microsoft Azure, its cloud services platform used by companies, games, and online applications. Azure is considered the main competitor of AWS (Amazon Web Services), which also recently experienced a similar technical problem that took thousands of sites and apps offline for several hours.
In an update published on Azure’s official portal, Microsoft acknowledged the access issues and noted that some users may not be able to enter the Microsoft 365 admin center, as well as experiencing delays connecting with other services.
What Microsoft says and when everything will return to normal
In its most recent communication, the company stated that its technical team is considering various options to resolve the failure and that the investigation is still ongoing.
According to an official Microsoft statement, the issue may have been caused by a configuration change, so they are blocking further changes to AFD services and rolling the system back to the last known good state.
It also announced that it will release new updates within the next hour, aiming to provide information on progress in restoring the service.
