What changes and when
Microsoft has announced a revision of Microsoft 365 Education licenses that dismantles some pillars of the free model. According to a report by IT之家, Office 365 A1 has no longer been sellable since November 5, 2026, on the Web Direct channel; for Cloud Solution Provider resellers and the volume licensing channel, sales will stop on May 1, 2027. Final retirement is set for January 1, 2028. Institutions with an enrollment agreement started before May 1, 2027, will be able to continue using existing licenses until the contract expires, but will not be able to renew or extend them if the renewal falls on or after January 1, 2028.
On the same date, Student Use Benefit is scheduled for retirement, and it will be eliminated from all education purchasing programs, including CSP and volume licensing. Licenses already active remain valid for the current subscription period; afterward, schools will have to identify students who still need the services and assign paid student licenses. Also from 2028, Exchange Online for Alumni, the free email service for alumni, and the OVS-ES and School 3 programs will cease. To keep alumni mailboxes, institutions will have to move to a paid plan, announced as coming on January 1, 2028, through CSP and EES.
Storage is no longer a standalone package
The most impactful change concerns cloud storage. Today, schools have a shared pool across OneDrive, SharePoint Online and Exchange Online that starts at 100TB free, to which license contributions and extra purchases are added. Under the new policy, from January 1, 2028, renewing or extending the contract will no longer entail the automatic allocation of those 100TB.
Capacity will be calculated mainly based on the number and type of licenses. For students, A2 contributes 4GB, A3 8GB, A5 and A7 12GB each. For teaching and administrative staff, A2 is worth 50GB, A3 75GB, A5 and A7 150GB. The new free A0 license for students does not add storage: consumption by its users is subtracted from the institution's shared pool. Microsoft suggests administrators assess current usage and future needs before renewal; in case of shortage, they can buy storage in 10TB blocks, move to licenses with a larger contribution, delete data or use Microsoft 365 Archive for inactive content.
The new A0–A7 scale and the open questions
In place of A1 comes a five-tier system — A0, A2, A3, A5 and A7 — with separate versions for students and staff and variants with or without Teams. A0 is free for eligible students and includes the Office desktop and web apps, Minecraft Education, Microsoft Entra ID Free and Learning Zone, but not Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Teams. Free access is conditional: the school must provide all staff with at least one paid A2 or higher license, and students must actively use Windows devices for educational activities. At the top of the scale, A7 adds to A5 advanced AI, identity management, security, governance and device management features, with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365 and Microsoft Entra Suite.
On pricing, from May 1, 2027, the education volume licensing channel will adopt uniform pricing across tiers for online services; the effect will apply at the first renewal or extension after that date, even if it occurs before 2028. Microsoft specifies that until the end of the current contract, institutions retain existing licenses, service rights and prices, and that the new system applies from the first renewal or extension on or after January 1, 2028. The price lists for the new plans remain to be verified, starting with the cost of alumni licenses and the actual level of A0 coverage for institutions with many students.
