In Short: A Quiet Month With a Few Useful Wins
October is the first Power BI release after FabCon Europe 2026, and it is a quieter one. The headline items are a native Gantt visual and a dropdown mode for the list slicer, both in preview. Around them sit some small but welcome reporting changes, custom visual support in Microsoft's AI report authoring skill, and a change to how semantic model refreshes count towards surge protection.
Two deadlines also land this month. Older builds of Power BI Desktop lose the old file picker for OneDrive and SharePoint, and the FabCon changes to the report format are now the normal way of working. This post takes each item in turn: what it is, its status, and who should care.
One caveat. Microsoft's own feature summary was not reachable from our tools when we wrote this, so where a detail comes from Microsoft Learn we say so, and where it rests on the summary as reported elsewhere we flag it.
Reporting: The Gantt Visual (Preview)
Power BI finally has a core Gantt visual, in preview. Until now, project timelines meant a custom visual from AppSource, a heavily formatted matrix or an HTML workaround. Microsoft Learn describes the new visual as a way to "plan projects, track schedules, or compare activities across categories".
What it does, according to Learn:
- Duration bars from a Start and End field, both of which can be measures
- Milestones, drawn when Start has a value and End is blank
- Progress on each bar, from a measure that returns the percentage complete
- Up to three category levels to group tasks, plus extra columns such as owner or status
- A zoomable date axis, with auto-scale or fixed primary and secondary levels, and shading for weekends or other days
The documented limits matter. The visual supports up to 1,000 rows, auto-scale does not show levels finer than days, and measure formatting may not carry into tooltips or columns. Each task has one start and one end, so a task with several phases needs a row per phase. To try it in Desktop, turn it on under Options, Preview features.
Who should care: PMOs, delivery teams and anyone who has paid for or maintained a third-party Gantt visual. Do not replace a working custom visual in a production report while this is in preview, but it is worth rebuilding one report to compare.
Reporting: List Slicer Dropdown and Show Selected First (Preview)
The list slicer gains a dropdown mode. Learn says it "saves canvas space while preserving item formatting", so images, labels and conditional formatting survive inside the dropdown. You can set the height and width of the drawer that opens.
Current selections appear as pills in the selection box, each with a dismiss button, and a count pill shows how many more are selected when they do not all fit. If a reader uses Select all and then clears items, each cleared item shows as a Not (item) pill, which makes the inverted filter visible for the first time.
Show selected first puts current selections at the top of the list. Learn documents it for both the list slicer and the button slicer. The list slicer itself is still marked as preview on Learn.
Who should care: report authors with long customer, product or cost-centre lists. It is a cleaner answer than the classic dropdown slicer when items need images or extra context. For the wider design principles, see our Power BI report design best practices.
Smaller Reporting Changes
Three smaller items are listed in the October summary as generally available, according to reports of it. We have not been able to confirm them on Microsoft Learn yet.
- Plot area background colour. Bar, column, line, area, combo, ribbon, waterfall and scatter charts can take a background fill behind the plot area, including conditional formatting from a measure. Useful for marking a target zone or a status.
- Auto-expanding hierarchy axis with field parameters. Bar, column and line charts with more than one field on the axis can now auto-expand when that axis is driven by a field parameter. One reviewer found it switched on by default and had to turn it off chart by chart on a client report, so check reports that use field parameters after you update.
- Personal bookmarks keep column widths. Personal bookmarks on table and matrix visuals now remember column widths, so a reader's saved view looks the way they left it.
Reports of Microsoft's post also say staff acknowledged that the plot area colour and the bookmark column widths were arriving slightly late. If you cannot see them yet, update Desktop and check again in a week or two.
AI: Report Authoring Skill Supports Custom Visuals
Microsoft's AI report authoring skill now works with custom visuals. Reports of the summary list this as generally available. The skill can use custom visuals already in a report and suggest an AppSource visual when the core visuals fall short. Adding a new visual from AppSource is still something you approve.
On Learn, the skill now appears as the Power BI Report skill, distributed through the Power BI authoring plugin in Microsoft's Skills for Fabric repository. It plans, designs, authors and validates reports, and Learn is explicit that local authoring "requires PBIP projects that use the PBIR report format". It also advises committing a baseline before letting an agent make substantial changes, so they can be reviewed or reverted.
Who should care: teams already using agents for Power BI development. If your organisation restricts custom visuals to certified or admin-approved ones, make sure the agent works inside that policy. This is a different tool from Copilot in the service; see Copilot in Power BI for what that does today, and our post on the Power BI Modeling MCP server for the model side.
Capacity: Fairer Surge Protection for Semantic Models
This one changes behaviour without any setting. According to reports of the summary, semantic models now report capacity consumption continuously during long-running background operations, such as large refreshes, rather than mostly at the end. Surge protection can then react to real usage earlier.
The practical effect is that rejections move earlier. A refresh is more likely to be turned away by surge protection before it starts, and less likely to tip the capacity into throttling late in the day. Microsoft shared measured figures for one region, and we have not been able to check them, so we are not repeating them here.
What Learn does confirm is how capacity-level surge protection works: when the 24-hour background percentage reaches your rejection threshold, the capacity rejects new background operations, but it "doesn't stop in-progress jobs" and does not guarantee that interactive requests avoid delay or rejection. Workspace-level surge protection is still in preview on Learn.
Who should care: capacity administrators. Review the rejection and recovery thresholds in the Capacity Metrics app after this change. Our guide to Fabric capacity administration covers the routine, and capacity overage covers the paid alternative to throttling.
Deadline: The Old Desktop File Picker
Microsoft Learn states that "starting in October, users with Power BI Desktop versions from March 2026 or earlier will no longer be able to save and share files to OneDrive and SharePoint." Nothing breaks for anyone on a recent build. The risk sits with locked-down laptops, virtual desktops and anyone who has deliberately held Desktop back.
Who should care: IT teams that manage Desktop versions centrally. Check what version your users actually run. We cover the detail in the Power BI Desktop file picker retirement.
Carried Over From FabCon Europe 2026
Several Power BI changes from FabCon, in the September 2026 feature summary, are now part of normal work:
- PBIR is the default report format and Power BI Projects are generally available. Editing and saving a legacy report converts it to PBIR, and in practice that conversion is one-way. Our guide to PBIP and PBIR covers the caveats.
- Excel export up to 500,000 rows from a table visual using Data with current layout, up from 150,000, generally available. This applies to that export mode, not every export path. Useful for one-off analysis; for recurring work, connecting Excel to the model is still better, as we argue in moving finance from Excel to Power BI.
- The modern Power Query Editor in Desktop is in preview, following the modern Get Data experience. Microsoft has noted that some gaps with the legacy interface remain, so keep the classic editor for production work for now.
For everything else from the conference, see our FabCon Europe 2026 recap.
What We Would Do This Month
- Update Power BI Desktop across the estate, which covers the file picker deadline and the delayed GA items in one step
- Trial the Gantt visual and the dropdown list slicer in a development report, not production
- Check reports that use field parameters on bar, column and line charts for unexpected expansion
- Review surge protection thresholds with a fresh look at the Capacity Metrics app
- Plan PBIR conversion deliberately rather than letting the first edit decide it for you
How We Help
Monthly releases are easy to skim and easy to miss. Our Power BI consulting team keeps client estates current: testing new visuals before they reach users, managing Desktop versions and PBIR migration, and tuning capacity settings when the platform changes underneath you.
Sources and Further Reading
- Power BI October 2026 Feature Summary
- Gantt visual in Power BI (preview) - Microsoft Learn
- Create and use a list slicer (preview) - Microsoft Learn
- Overview of slicers in Power BI - Microsoft Learn
- Power BI Report skill - Microsoft Learn
- Manage surge protection - Microsoft Learn
- What's new in Power BI - Microsoft Learn
- Power BI September 2026 Feature Summary
Frequently asked
The main additions are a native Gantt visual and a dropdown mode for the list slicer with Show selected first, both in preview. Smaller changes include a plot area background colour, auto-expanding hierarchy axes with field parameters, personal bookmarks that keep column widths, custom visual support in the AI report authoring skill, and earlier consumption reporting for semantic model refreshes under surge protection.
Yes, in preview. The core Gantt visual shows duration bars, milestones, progress and up to three category levels, with a zoomable date axis. Microsoft Learn lists a limit of 1,000 rows. Test it in a development report before replacing a third-party Gantt visual in production.
Dropdown mode shows list slicer items in a drawer below a selection box, keeping images, labels and conditional formatting. Selections appear as removable pills, a count pill shows extra selections, and Show selected first moves chosen items to the top. The list slicer is still in preview.
Semantic models now report capacity consumption during long-running background operations such as large refreshes, rather than mostly at the end. Surge protection can react earlier, so rejections tend to happen before work starts rather than as late throttling. No configuration change is needed, but administrators should review their thresholds.
Microsoft Learn says that starting in October, Power BI Desktop versions from March 2026 or earlier can no longer save and share files to OneDrive and SharePoint through the old file picker. Updating Desktop to a current release keeps this working.
PBIR is now the default report format and Power BI Projects are generally available, table visuals can export up to 500,000 rows to Excel with Data with current layout, and the modern Power Query Editor is in preview in Desktop. Editing a legacy report converts it to PBIR, so plan that conversion deliberately.
