GitHub Availability Dips in May 2026

GitHub details nine service disruptions in May 2026, highlighting ongoing infrastructure upgrades and lessons learned from major incidents.

Jun 11 at 10:03 PM7 min read

Abstract digital representation of GitHub platform status and data flow — An overview of GitHub's platform performance and infrastructure updates for May 2026.· Github Blog

Visual TL;DR. May 2026 Disruptions leads to Infrastructure Upgrades. Infrastructure Upgrades leads to Azure Migration. Infrastructure Upgrades leads to Monolith Decomposition. Monolith Decomposition leads to Service Isolation. Azure Migration leads to Improved Reliability. Service Isolation leads to Improved Reliability. New Users Service leads to Improved Reliability. Stateless Tokens leads to Improved Reliability. Schema Migration Incident triggered May 2026 Disruptions.

May 2026 Disruptions: nine service disruptions leading to degraded performance across platform
Infrastructure Upgrades: ongoing investments aimed at enhancing reliability and preventing failures
Azure Migration: migrating services to Azure, 40% monolith & 30% Git traffic now on Azure
Monolith Decomposition: breaking down monolithic architecture into isolated components
Service Isolation: separating user, auth, and authz domains prevents cascading failures
New Users Service: handling double previous traffic at a lower cost
Stateless Tokens: rolling out to reduce database load during peak times
Schema Migration Incident: routine online migration on high-traffic table triggered critical incident
Improved Reliability: aiming to prevent single points of failure and enhance stability

Visual TL;DRQuickExplainDeeper

GitHub reported nine service disruptions in May 2026, leading to degraded performance across its platform. These incidents occurred as the company continues significant infrastructure investments aimed at enhancing reliability.

The company is actively migrating services to Azure and breaking down its monolithic architecture into isolated components. This strategy aims to prevent single points of failure. As of May, 40% of monolith traffic and 30% of Git traffic now run on Azure, with repository replication at 99%.

Significant progress has been made in isolating the primary database cluster. Separating user, authentication, and authorization domains prevents cascading failures. A new users service is handling double previous traffic at a lower cost, and stateless authentication tokens are rolling out to reduce database load during peak times.

A critical incident on May 4th, lasting over an hour, was triggered by a routine online schema migration on a high-traffic database table. The combined load saturated database connections, causing query contention and widespread timeouts affecting pull requests, issues, actions, and Git operations. Dependent services like Codespaces, Packages, and Copilot also experienced degraded performance.

The incident was detected quickly, and the migration was paused, leading to recovery. Mitigation took approximately 33 minutes, with full resolution following 30 minutes later. As a result, GitHub is implementing stricter controls for database migrations, including dynamic throttling and automated circuit breakers.

GitHub Actions faced degradation on May 5th and 6th due to issues with hosted runners in the East US region. The May 5th incident, impacting 13.5% of standard runner jobs, was caused by a scale-up operation hitting an internal rate limit. Remediation efforts for this incident inadvertently introduced a configuration error that led to the May 6th degradation, affecting 17.1% of standard runner jobs.

GitHub is committed to improving reliability, prioritizing availability over new features. The company acknowledges ongoing work is needed but emphasizes its dedication to ensuring GitHub is consistently available.

Gartner Recognition

This focus on reliability comes as GitHub was recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI Code Assistants for the second consecutive year.

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