What's new in Business Central 2026 Release Wave 1 (v28)

Apr 8, 2025

4 min read

The latest update for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, version 28, will be available starting in April 2026. This version promises to be a significant update, with important enhancements in areas such as AI-powered agents, supply chain, quality, and analytics. Here are the details. The release notes for this update can be found here: What's new in Business Central v28.0

AI-powered agents and copilot-like functions

A key focus of this version is the expansion of AI-powered agents within Business Central. These agents work directly within the application to automate recurring tasks, such as interpreting documents, categorizing expenses, and managing approvals for liabilities and expenses.

By reducing manual intervention, companies can increase their productivity while ensuring control and compliance.

Microsoft is also continuing to integrate Copilot and role-based AI across Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Business Central users can therefore expect smoother handoffs and contextual support in their daily workflows.

Stronger functions for finance, operations and supply chain

The Release Wave 2026 brings significant improvements in finance and reporting, including smarter financial processes, better transparency of business performance, and more structured reporting tools that provide decision-makers with valuable insights from the outset.

With version 28, Microsoft is also introducing structured control mechanisms for supply chain processes – a long-awaited feature for many operations teams. Approval workflows are now firmly integrated into key areas such as:

Article book pages
Inventory book pages
Production book sheets (output)
Consumption log sheets

This ensures greater transparency and accountability in the processes.

Furthermore, requirements requisition and planning worksheets now support batch-level approvals. Once an approval process has started, changes to planning lines are restricted, ensuring data integrity. Approvers can accept, reject, or delegate requests.

In the area of data management, product management is improved through attributes at the variant level. Users can maintain attributes directly in the variant list. A new synchronization function also makes it possible to transfer attributes from the main product to all variants – significantly reducing manual maintenance effort.

Improved quality control across end-to-end processes

Release Wave 1 2026 places a stronger focus on quality through integrated end-to-end quality checks along the manufacturing and supply chain processes.

These features enable teams to:

Defining quality standards
to follow exams
To manage deviations directly in the system

This reduces the dependence on manual processes.

By integrating quality control into everyday workflows, companies can identify problems early, simplify compliance and ensure more consistent product quality – ultimately leading to greater efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The Shopify connector has also been improved to ensure a smoother data flow and better transparency for trading and sales teams.

Mandatory changes in version 28: Here's what you should prepare for

With version 28 of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, several previously optional features are now mandatory. Therefore, it is important for businesses to review their current configuration beforehand. Key areas affected include the new pricing structure in sales, the revaluation of the general ledger currency, and the enhanced "Tell Me" functionality.

If your company is still relying on older configurations in any of these areas, this update can directly impact your workflows and customizations. Early preparation allows you to assess changes, avoid disruptions, and ensure a smoother transition. Close collaboration with your implementation partner can help you understand the specific impacts and effectively plan the necessary adjustments.

If you're unsure how these changes might affect your current configuration, now is usually the right time to investigate further. Contact Everware – we frequently work with teams to assess the impact of an upgrade and identify what needs to be considered before it becomes a challenge during implementation.

Improved governance, security, and environmental management

For IT professionals and administrators, Release Wave 2026 brings improvements in the areas of governance, compliance, and security:

Partner-managed access to environments: Partners can be granted targeted permissions for specific environments.
Customer-managed encryption keys to meet strict data protection requirements
Extended update windows and a unified interface for managing personal extensions (PTEs) and AppSource apps

This facilitates deployments across multiple environments.

Planning the rollout for Business Central 2026 Wave 1

Start by reviewing the official release plan for Dynamics 365 2026 Wave 1, which includes all new features and timelines: 2026 release wave 1 plan – Microsoft Learn
For specific details on Business Central, we recommend the corresponding overview for Release Wave 1: Business Central 2026 release wave 1 – Microsoft Learn
Technical partners and developers can use the public preview of Update 28.0 and the early access features to test new features and provide feedback: Update 28.0 public preview – Microsoft Learn Early Access Preview: New Features (BC28) – community summary

If you are responsible for Business Central, you should now:

analyze the new features
conduct an impact analysis
Align upgrade and training plans with the rollout period (April–September 2026).

Release schedule overview

To better understand how and when these features will become available, here is a simplified overview of the release plan:

phase	Timeline	What it means for you
Early Access	February 2026	Initial testing of new features in a sandbox environment
Public Preview	March 2026	Enhanced access for validation and feedback
General availability	April 2026	Official launch for production environments
Regional rollout	April – September 2026	Phased activation by region and client