GitHub Copilot Global Model Policy Goes GA: Phased Rollout Through September 1, Open-Weight Models Off by Default

GitHub announced general availability of the global model policy for Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise on August 26, 2026, with enforcement rolling out gradually through September 1¹. It takes effect at different times for different enterprises¹. Models an administrator never configured individually shift to a “Delegate to default policy” state and begin following the policy setting¹. Since the policy is enabled by default, leaving it alone makes those models available to users¹.

Settings an admin explicitly turned on or off are left untouched¹. Separately, open-weight models (DeepSeek and Kimi K2 among the examples given) and models not covered by GitHub’s data retention agreement (Fable 5 among them) are excluded from default enablement regardless of the policy¹.

After the rollout, each model in the settings shows one of four states: enabled, disabled, delegate to enterprise teams/apps or organizations, or delegate to default policy¹. GitHub writes that it is evaluating removing the “delegate to default policy” state so that every policy reflects an explicit choice — a possibility under consideration, not a decision¹.

Sources

1. Global model policy generally available - GitHub official changelog (August 26, 2026)