AZ-500 retirement: what retired, what happens to your certification, what's next

The short answer

AZ-500 retired on August 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time (AZ-500 study guide). The certification it led to, Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate, retired on the same date, together with its renewal assessment. Nobody can earn or renew it now (certification page).

Microsoft points AZ-500 candidates to SC-500 and its certification, Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate (Microsoft Credentials roundup, June 2026).

The dates

When	What the source says	Source
May 2026	SC-500 beta and training expected to go live, on the exam delivery schedule	Pearson VUE
June 25, 2026	Microsoft’s credentials roundup lists the AZ-500 retirement for August 2026 and names SC-500’s certification as the recommended new one. SC-500 is in beta, with general availability set for July 2026	Credentials roundup
July 2026	SC-500 training and exam expected to go live	Pearson VUE
August 31, 2026, 11:59 PM CST	AZ-500, its certification and its renewal assessment retire	AZ-500 study guide, certification page

Microsoft’s retirement page now lists AZ-500 among recently retired exams. It keeps a link to the detail pages of retired exams for 12 months, for reference (retirement page).

If you already hold Azure Security Engineer Associate

• It stays on your transcript. A certification you earned before it retired stays in your Microsoft Learn profile (retirement page).
• It is valid until it expires. Microsoft’s June roundup says a certification you’ve already earned remains valid until its expiry date (Credentials roundup).
• You can’t extend it. Renewal normally means passing a free online assessment in the six months before expiry, which adds a year (certification renewal). For this certification that option ended on August 31 (certification page, retirement page).
• Partner credit runs a year longer. For Microsoft Partners, certifications earned before they retire keep counting toward partner requirements for one year after the retirement date (retirement page).
• Check the Cybersecurity Architect Expert prerequisite. The SC-100 certification page now lists three qualifying certifications: Identity and Access Administrator Associate, Security Operations Analyst Associate, and Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate. Azure Security Engineer Associate is not on the list (Cybersecurity Architect Expert). The page doesn’t say how a certification earned before the retirement is treated. Pearson VUE’s FAQ says prerequisites will be updated with the replacement certification where applicable (Pearson VUE). If SC-100 is your plan, ask Microsoft Credentials support before you book.

If you were studying for AZ-500

You can no longer sit the exam (retirement page). The work is not lost. Most AZ-500 subjects are still in SC-500, reorganized: Entra access controls, Key Vault, Azure Policy, network filtering and private access, storage, Azure SQL, virtual machines, containers, Defender for Cloud and Sentinel connectors (SC-500 study guide, AZ-500 study guide).

Three blocks are new and need study from scratch: securing AI (11 objectives), Sentinel data collection beyond connectors and automation (workspaces, roles, syslog and CEF, Windows Event Forwarding, custom tables, retention), and Security Copilot (4 objectives) (SC-500 study guide).

What to take next

SC-500, if you secure Azure workloads. Its certification is Microsoft’s recommended new certification for AZ-500 (Credentials roundup), and it carries the same role and level: Security Engineer, Intermediate (Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate). Practical details from the certification page:

• 120 minutes, proctored, possibly with interactive components.
• The price depends on the country or region where you take the exam.
• The practice assessment was not available on October 20, 2026.

Source: certification page. Microsoft’s course SC-500T00 has 12 free self-paced learning paths for it (course SC-500T00, Microsoft Learn FAQ).

SC-300, if your security work is mostly identity. It leads to Identity and Access Administrator Associate, which covers running identity and access management with Microsoft Entra (certification page).

SC-200, if you work in security operations. It leads to Security Operations Analyst Associate: detections, incident response and threat hunting in Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel (certification page).

Any one of the three meets the prerequisite for Cybersecurity Architect Expert (Cybersecurity Architect Expert).

If SC-500 is next for you, our SC-500 study guide includes a chapter that maps the AZ-500 outline onto the new one, objective by objective.