2025 was a monumental year for Microsoft Power BI, marked by its 10-year anniversary and a series of community celebrations, global contests, and product advancements that delivered new capabilities empowering users to turn data into action faster than ever. Below we recap some of the year’s biggest highlights—from milestone events to feature breakthroughs—that made 2025 a year to remember.
Celebrating 10 years of Power BI
July 2025 marked Power BI’s 10-year anniversary, a milestone celebrated with the community through special events, contests, and learning opportunities. When Power BI was launched a decade ago, it had about 500,000 early adopters: today it’s used by over 375,000 organizations worldwide. In fact, 30 million monthly active users now rely on Power BI for insights—a testament to how the community of users have transformed business intelligence at scale and how far the platform has come as creators now leverage the full power of Microsoft Fabric empowering users with a unified experience for data and AI driven innovation.
To celebrate this achievement, Power BI rolled out the “#PBI10” anniversary events. A two-month learning bonanza (live expert-led skill sessions, dashboard design workshops, and AMA Q&As), discounted certification exam vouchers, and even a fun retrospective startup experience in Power BI Desktop that paid homage to the product’s evolution. The festivities culminated in a virtual birthday party, featuring the Power BI team, who shared behind-the-scenes stories, highlighted the platform’s journey, and gave a sneak peek of the future in an interactive live stream. Throughout the celebration, longtime users and newcomers alike were invited to share their own Power BI stories and creative dashboards on social media using #PBI10, bringing to life a decade of impactful data culture.
Power BI Data Viz championships
Another hallmark of 2025 was the launch of the Power BI Data Visualization World Championships, an unprecedented global contest that showcased the art of data storytelling by the Power BI community. The competition debuted at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (FabCon) in Las Vegas with a live showdown in front of a panel of judges and a large in person audience of attendees cheering on finalists. Contestants had 20 minutes to build a compelling report from scratch and in the thrilling finale, Jon Sandmann emerged as the inaugural Power BI DataViz World Champion, wowing judges with a report on OECD well-being data built in the allotted time.
The excitement continued into late summer at the Fabric Community Conference (FabCon Europe) in Vienna, Austria where another live championship face-off occurred that included outstanding contenders from around the globe. After an intense on-stage competition, Paulo Grijó of Brazil was announced as the Power BI DataViz World Champion. Paulo’s winning report incorporated a color vision deficiency simulator to emphasize inclusive design, and his innovative approach truly impressed the audience and judges. His victory at FabCon EU, alongside Jon’s win in the US, exemplified the global nature of Power BI’s community—with top talent spanning continents.
The Power BI DataViz Championships not only crowned winners but also celebrated the amazing talents and diversity of the community with hundreds of participants taking part in the weekly design challenges, showcasing participants’ creativity, analytical storytelling, and technical skills and learning from each other. Microsoft provided not just prizes (like free FabCon conference passes and swag) but recognition with all finalist entries located in the Power BI Community Gallery to explore and get inspired before the next Power BI DataViz Championship event.
Breakthrough advancements
Alongside community highlights, 2025 witnessed major product innovations in Power BI – many of which had been eagerly anticipated by users. These new features focused on making Power BI more open, actionable, and intelligent than ever. The following details some of the year’s most anticipated updates.
Desktop and web data modeling parity
The ability to create and edit Power BI semantic models directly in the Power BI service (Generally Available) established core data modeling parity between Power BI Desktop and Power BI service, empowering more users including those operating on MacOS—the ability to develop their end-to-end solutions entirely through a web browser. This enables creators to handle the full workflow, from data ingestion and transformation with Power Query to modeling and report generation, without needing to transition development between the desktop and cloud. Additionally, all changes are automatically saved and supported by semantic model version history within the service.
Write Back Within Reports
The introduction of translytical task flows (Preview) in Power BI allows users to trigger actions and write data back to source systems directly from a report, turning insights into action without leaving the experience. “Translytical” reflects the blending of transactional and analytical work; in practice, it means Power BI can now support write‑back and operational workflows that historically required separate applications. When a metric signals that something needs attention, the user can follow up immediately—modifying a record, adding context, or kicking off a custom workflow–without switching tools or breaking focus.
This evolution is powered by Fabric user data functions, which enable reports to initiate actions that once lived entirely outside the business intelligence layer. It represents a shift toward more interactive, closed‑loop decision‑making, where a report becomes not just a place to observe what’s happening but a space where work can continue. At FabCon Vienna 2025, Patrick LeBlanc illustrated this direction through a custom AI integration that generated text summaries based on user inputs using translytical task flows, demonstrating how these capabilities can support richer and more responsive report experiences.
AI and Copilot: Chat with your data
Power BI embraced the AI revolution with the announcement of the Chat with your data (Preview) experience, introduced at Microsoft Build 2025. This full‑screen chat interface lets users ask questions about their data in natural language queries like “What were this quarter’s sales by region?” to receive instant answers drawn from the reports, datasets, and apps they already have access to, all while honoring existing security permissions. Copilot identifies the most relevant sources, returns a clear response, and includes references back to the visuals or models that informed its response, helping users understand exactly where each insight came from.
Throughout the year, Copilot became even more accessible with the preview of Copilot in Power BI Mobile, bringing natural‑language data exploration to phones through voice or text. Improvements across the experience made answers more reliable and contextual, supported by clearer guidance and features like verified answers, which ensured certain responses came from vetted, authoritative definitions. These updates reflect a broader move toward conversational BI, where anyone can explore data simply by asking. As organizations lean further into AI‑assisted decision‑making, Chat with your data lowers the barrier to engaging with Power BI—making insights easier to reach, easier to understand, and closer to the way people naturally think.
Turning everyday documents into analytics ready data
OneDrive and SharePoint shortcuts in OneLake (Preview) (introduced at the Power Platform Community Conference 2025) make it easy for everyday users to bring familiar files—Word documents, Excel workbooks, PowerPoint decks, PDFs—directly alongside their analytics and operational data in OneLake, giving users a single place to find both business context and structured information without duplicating content.
Because the files remain in their original locations, existing permissions stay intact, ensuring a secure and seamless experience. This avoids duplicated content and helps users stay confident they’re always working with the most up‑to‑date version. With Fabric treating these shortcut‑linked files like native OneLake content, insights automatically reflect any changes made to the documents, allowing users to spend less time gathering and copying information between platforms and more time understanding it.
And more…
While we highlighted only a handful of updates, we encourage you to subscribe to the Power BI blog feed—or use your preferred RSS reader—from the righthand menu of the Power BI Blog home page. It’s the easiest way to stay informed about what’s coming next, especially as we look toward 2026, and the many improvements that will continue to shape the product and excite our community, including enhancements like the new visual defaults for Power BI reports and visual improvements. These updates introduce richer customization options, refresh the base themes, and help anyone to create professional‑looking reports in seconds.
Join us in Atlanta for FabCon + SQLCon 2026
Mark your calendar for March 16–20, 2026, when FabCon and SQLCon come together in Atlanta, Georgia for an unforgettable week that unites the entire data community. From Power BI and Microsoft Fabric developers to SQL Server and Azure SQL professionals, this co‑located experience brings everyone under one roof to learn, connect, and explore the full power of Fabric, Power BI, SQL Server, Azure SQL, Real‑Time Intelligence, AI, data engineering, and analytics.
With inspiring keynotes at State Farm Arena, deep‑dive workshops, more than 200 technical sessions, a buzzing expo hall, a vibrant community lounge, and the Power BI Data Viz World Championship at the Georgia World Congress Center, there’s truly something for every data professional. Even better, one registration grants full access to both FabCon and SQLCon— giving you the freedom to mix sessions, meet experts, and engage with peers across the entire Microsoft data ecosystem. With SQLCon now officially integrated, attendees will be immersed into the latest innovations across SQL Server and Azure SQL, including roadmap updates, performance tuning, security advancements, and AI‑powered applications.
Whether you want to sharpen your skills, expand your career, or simply reignite your passion for data, FabCon + SQLCon 2026 is the place to be. We can’t wait to welcome you to Atlanta as we continue building the future of data together. Register now with code FABCOMM to get $200 off registration!
Conclusion: 10 years of innovation setting the stage for the future
If 2025 served as an example, the groundwork is firmly established for Power BI’s next decade to be just as transformative as its first. Across FabCon, Microsoft Build, the Power Platform Community Conference, and countless conversations with our community, one theme stands out: wherever data lives—across Microsoft 365, the Power Platform, or Microsoft Fabric—Power BI is deeply integrated, helping users uncover insights that directly inform decisions. The community continues to be a driving force by sharing ideas and voting, enabling feedback that drives our collective progress.
Your feedback helps shapes the product—from advancing professional developer experiences like TMDL and MCPs, to improving collaboration and content distribution through Org apps, to the ongoing enhancements in data visualization (yes, including tables and matrices!) with targeted release timelines provided by the Fabric Roadmap.
The Power BI team has outlined a future vision that prioritizes greater integration and seamless connection between insight and action, fostering innovation in data and insights through Microsoft Fabric and AI. The ongoing expansion of community initiatives in skilling, education, and events further supports this mission to ensure organizations can benefit from the latest product innovations.
As 2025 concludes, the Power BI team extends sincere appreciation to the community, our customers, and partners, and looks forward to reconnecting in January 2026 with additional updates.
Wishing everyone happy holidays and a happy new year!