Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program: 70 points and a badge

If you’ve just taken on marketing or alliances at a Microsoft partner, or you last looked at all this in the Microsoft Partner Network days, this guide to the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program is for you.

The Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program is how Microsoft organises companies that sell, build on and deliver its products. Joining is free. You pay for benefits packages and earn Solutions Partner designations with a score of 70 out of 100.

I worked for Microsoft partners before I started Fifty Five and Five, and I’ve watched this programme change its name and its rules a few times since.

Everything here was checked on Microsoft’s own pages on 20 October 2026. Microsoft’s year runs from July to June, so FY27 is the year we’re in now, and some of this will move again before it ends.

What is the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program?

It’s the umbrella for everything Microsoft offers partners. Microsoft describes it as giving partners “program options to differentiate your business, go to market, and sell your solutions”, with separate routes for services partners, software companies (ISVs) and training partners (Microsoft Learn ).

The benefits are practical. Microsoft lists Azure credits, cloud services, product licences, technical consultation, developer tools and marketing benefits such as customer-facing badges (Microsoft Learn ).

What happened to the Microsoft Partner Network?

The Microsoft Partner Network was renamed. Microsoft’s own documentation says so plainly: “The Microsoft Partner Network is now called the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program” (Microsoft Learn ). The old membership levels went with the old name. Microsoft says it “no longer offers Silver and gold memberships” and that partners “should stop using references to Silver and gold membership” (Microsoft Learn ). The legacy Silver and Gold packages, and the Microsoft Action Pack, stopped being available on 22 January 2025. Partners with active purchases keep their benefits until the end date but can’t renew (Microsoft Learn ). Microsoft points former Silver and Action Pack partners to the Partner Success Core and Expanded benefits packages, and former Gold partners to a Solutions Partner designation. If your website, proposals or email signatures still say “Gold partner”, they’re out of date.

How does the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program work?

Think of it as layers. Membership is free, benefits packages are bought, and designations are earned first and paid for second. Specialisations sit on top.

Prices are from Microsoft’s membership pages (Microsoft Learn ), which also say each is “or equivalent in local currency” and that exchange rates update dynamically. Software companies have their own route, which I come back to under FY27.

How do you become a Solutions Partner?

You earn it. Microsoft gives every partner a partner capability score in each of six solution pathways, out of 100 points, across three categories: performance, skilling and customer success. To qualify you need “a partner capability score for the solution area … of at least 70 points”, every metric above zero, and you have to meet both on at least one day in your qualification window (Microsoft Learn ).

Microsoft builds the score from data it already holds in Partner Center:

• Performance is net customer adds: customers gained over the last 12 months, minus customers lost.
• Skilling counts people in your company with intermediate and advanced Microsoft certifications, linked to your organisation.
• Customer success measures usage growth and deployments of Microsoft products across your customers.

To give you a feel for the numbers, on the Modern Work pathway’s enterprise track each net new customer is worth four points, up to 20 points from five customers. On the small and medium business track it’s two points each, up to 20 from ten (Microsoft Learn ). One to watch on skilling: Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert, the only advanced certification on Modern Work’s list, retires on 30 November 2026. Microsoft keeps counting it until 30 November 2027 for people who earned it before then, but hasn’t named a replacement.

Once you qualify, you buy the designation, and you stay enrolled until your anniversary date “regardless of increase or decrease in your score”. Then you have to qualify again to renew. One fee covers every area, too. If you’re already a Solutions Partner and qualify in another area, Microsoft enrols you in it automatically, with no second purchase (Microsoft Learn ).

The six pathways now roll up into three customer-facing badges (Microsoft Learn ):

What are specialisations, and do they cost extra?

They don’t. Specialisations show deeper expertise in a narrower area, and Microsoft says you don’t need to buy them separately if you’re enrolled in a Solutions Partner designation (Microsoft Learn ). You do need the matching designation first: Cloud Security needs Security, for example, and Analytics on Microsoft Azure needs Data & AI (Microsoft Learn ).

Enrolling is free, but earning one takes work. Each specialisation has its own performance and skilling bar, and some need an audit. Since July 2026 all four security specialisations are audited by an independent third party, every two years, and Microsoft says “The audit is funded by the partner” (Partner Center announcements, August 2026 ).

There’s also a cap on the benefits. Specialisation benefits stop at five specialisations for the Azure pathways and three each for Business Applications, Modern Work and Security (Microsoft Learn ). You can hold more, you just don’t get extra benefits for them.

Which benefits package should you buy?

It depends how many licences and how much support you’ll actually use. Microsoft only lets you buy each package once per company (per Partner Global Account, in its words), so pick the one that fits.

• Partner Launch Benefits (US$350) is the entry point. It includes five Microsoft 365 Business Premium seats, US$700 of Azure credits and a handful of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform licences (Microsoft Learn ).
• Partner Success Core Benefits (US$925) steps up to US$2,400 of Azure credits and 15 seats each of Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Teams, Entra ID P2, Defender for Endpoint and more (Microsoft Learn ).
• Partner Success Expanded Benefits (US$4,125) is the big one: US$5,000 of Azure credits, ten Microsoft 365 Copilot licences and 35 seats each of Microsoft 365 Business Premium and the Intune, Entra and Defender suites (Microsoft Learn ).

If I were choosing, I’d count the seats we’d really use before looking at the headline numbers. Whichever package you pick, your marketing team gets Partner Marketing Center Pro, Microsoft’s AI campaign platform for partners, which our piece on co-marketing strategy for Microsoft partners covers.

What changed in the partner programme for FY27?

Several of the FY27 changes were announced at MCAPS Start for Partners , Microsoft’s start-of-year partner event, on 22 July 2026. These are the ones I’d want a partner marketer to know about, all from Microsoft’s monthly Partner Center announcements (July , August , September , October ):

1. New badge names. The six designations now show as three badges, as in the table above. How you qualify hasn’t changed, and Microsoft says no action is required, but it does suggest you “refresh your customer-facing materials to reflect the new names where applicable”. That means your website, decks and proposals.
2. Specialisations merged. On 31 July three new ones replaced seven old ones: Analytics on Microsoft Azure, Agentic Business Solutions and App Modernization on Microsoft Azure. If you held one of the old ones, Microsoft moved you across automatically, with one exception: Business Intelligence holders have to qualify again.
3. A Frontier Partner specialisation. Live since 30 September, it recognises partners who can “design, build, deploy, govern, and secure AI agents” across Microsoft’s AI stack. It makes you eligible for Frontier co-sell opportunities and comes with “packaged go-to-market resources, including marketing campaigns and case study opportunities”. The older Frontier Partner badge retires at the end of June 2027.
4. One programme for software companies. Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace launched on 28 September. It combines ISV Success, Marketplace Rewards, Azure IP co-sell and certified software designations, and existing partners move across at renewal.
5. Easier routes to some designations. SMB-focused partners no longer need to hit an Azure revenue threshold for the SMB track on the three Azure pathways, and from 5 October more Azure security workloads count towards Solutions Partner for Security.
6. Renewal gets stricter. From early 2027 the renewal window opens 30 days before your anniversary date and the 30-day grace period afterwards goes. Miss it and the offer and its benefits expire the day after. And from 1 November 2026, every benefit expires on your package’s end date, not on the day you first redeemed it.

An Agentic Security specialisation is also “currently in design” for FY27, so expect at least one more change before June.

How does the programme help your marketing?

The programme helps your marketing in three ways.

• Money. Co-op funds are money you earn as a share of your incentive earnings and claim back against marketing activities (Microsoft Learn ). Microsoft’s FY27 co-op guidance points more of that money at demand generation (Partner Center announcements, August 2026 ), and Microsoft ECIF explained covers ECIF, the money Microsoft’s sales and marketing teams use to pay for customers’ proofs of concept and deployments, not marketing.
• Tools. Partner Marketing Center Pro, with Microsoft’s ready-made campaigns you can co-brand and translate.
• Proof. The badges themselves, and with the Frontier Partner specialisation, case study opportunities.

How you put those together into a campaign with Microsoft is a whole piece of its own, so I wrote one: co-marketing strategy for Microsoft partners .

One more thing from our own work. When Microsoft’s partner marketing team wanted to know whether the marketing funds it gave partners were paying off , we built them the Partner Benchmarking Tool. It covered more than 10,000 partners and was built to answer one question: “Did giving marketing funds to this company result in better outcomes for us?” (our case study ). So Microsoft has looked at partner marketing as well as partner scores.

How do you join the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program?

It’s free and takes a few steps. Microsoft’s own partner site says you can “Enroll at no cost” (Microsoft partner site ).

1. Sign up. Go to the partner site, select “Become a partner” and create a free account with your business email.
2. Get verified. Microsoft checks “Your business is legally registered with an active registration at the stated address” and that your account details are accurate (Microsoft Learn ). The instructions arrive by email and they’re time-sensitive, so watch for them (Microsoft partner site ).
3. Set up roles. Someone needs the “Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partner admin” role in Partner Center to manage membership (Microsoft Learn ).
4. Link your people’s certifications. Skilling points only count once each person’s Microsoft Learn profile is linked to your organisation (Microsoft Learn ).
5. Choose your offers. Buy a benefits package if you need one, and watch your partner capability score in the Membership workspace until a designation qualifies.

So what is the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, and how does it work for partners?

It’s Microsoft’s partner programme, and the new name for the Microsoft Partner Network. Membership is free. Benefits packages cost from US$350 to US$4,125 a year. A Solutions Partner designation needs a partner capability score of at least 70 out of 100, built from your customers, your certified people and your customers’ use of Microsoft products, and then costs US$4,875 a year. Specialisations sit on top at no extra cost, with their own bar to clear.

For FY27 the badges have new names, several specialisations have merged, and renewal gets less forgiving from early 2027. If your marketing still says “Gold partner”, the checks in our piece on MSP marketing will catch that wording. And if you’d like help turning the badge into something buyers remember, get in touch.

Frequently asked questions