GitHub Copilot Enterprise Managed Settings Can Now Set the Default Model

GitHub announced on September 2, 2026 that enterprise-managed settings can now set the default GitHub Copilot model¹.

• Organizations can set the default model used for new conversations¹
• Enterprise teams can be assigned a different default model. Set the model key as overridable and update team configuration files in team-mappings.json. All other users inherit the enterprise default¹
• Generally available with Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise, covering the GitHub Copilot app, Copilot CLI, and Visual Studio Code¹

This puts the question of which model each group uses in the organization’s hands. Copilot ships changes frequently — the August round of VS Code Copilot updates, which added external session handoff among other things, landed only days earlier. For organizations running Copilot across several departments, the choice between standardizing on a single default and varying it by the nature of each codebase is now something that can be expressed in configuration.

Sources

1. Enterprise-managed settings support any default model - GitHub Changelog (September 2, 2026)