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Salesforce has run on a three-release rhythm for years. Yet, the Salesforce Winter ’27 release is here with a visible shift in the most familiar cadence.
Product names are consolidating under Agentforce. The release notes state that Sales Cloud is now Agentforce Sales, and that Revenue Cloud is now Agentforce Revenue Management. Marketing Cloud Next is also referred to as Agentforce Marketing. Data Cloud became Data 360 in October 2025. Agentforce is no longer a product alongside the clouds. It is becoming the naming layer across them.
The notes themselves were restructured in this cycle. Customization, Deployment, Development, Experience Cloud, Mobile, and Salesforce CMS now sit inside a single Platform section.
Several product lines have also stopped waiting for the season. Sales features ship as often as monthly. Data 360 does the same, with Winter ’27 changes generally listed under October 2026.
What still runs strictly on the seasonal clock is enforcement: the release updates that change existing behavior on a date you do not choose. That is where a seasonal release still carries weight, and it is where Winter ’27 is worth reading closely.
Here is what the Salesforce Winter ’27 release contains, what moved, and what is new across each cloud.
Salesforce Winter ’27 Release at a Glance
Salesforce published the Salesforce Winter ’27 release notes on August 19, 2026[1], last updated August 20. Sandbox preview began August 28, and production instances upgrade across three weekends: September 4, October 2, and October 9, 2026, assigned by instance.
Key Takeaways
- Four release updates enforce with the Salesforce Winter ’27 release. Three are accessibility enhancements for high-magnification viewing, and the fourth is Enable Profile Filtering.
- Enable Profile Filtering is the only Winter ’27 enforcement that changes what data a user can access. It limits profile name visibility to a user’s own profile unless they hold the View All Profiles permission.
- The OAuth 2.0 username-password flow retirement did not enforce in Winter ’27. Salesforce postponed it to February 20, 2027.
- Update Instanced URLs in API Traffic moved to Spring ’27, having been scheduled for Spring ’26.
- Adopt Authorized Email Domains was canceled outright and replaced by Maintain Your Email Verification Exception, which enforces on December 1, 2026.
- The heavier enforcement wave runs from November 2026 through Summer ’27. It includes the retirement of Salesforce to Salesforce and the migration of all connected apps to external client apps.
- Sales Cloud is now Agentforce Sales and Revenue Cloud is now Agentforce Revenue Management, per the release notes.
When Does the Salesforce Winter ’27 Release Reach Your Org?
Production instances upgrade on September 4, October 2, or October 9, 2026, depending on your instance. Sandbox preview began August 28. Check Salesforce Trust for your specific date.
According to the Salesforce Admins release countdown, the Salesforce Winter ’27 release date calendar runs as follows
| Date | What Happens |
|---|---|
|
August 13, 2026 |
Pre-release Developer Edition org signup opens |
|
August 19, 2026 |
Release notes published |
|
August 27, 2026, before 5 p.m. PT |
Deadline to refresh a sandbox onto a preview instance |
|
August 28, 2026 |
Sandbox preview begins |
|
September 4, October 2, October 9, 2026 |
Production instances upgrade |
|
October 5, 2026 |
Salesforce publishes its admin feature roundup |
Some coverage lists production weekends of August 29, October 3, and October 10. Those are the same maintenance windows read off Salesforce Trust, which shows them running into Saturday, while Salesforce dates them from the Friday.
Your production date is instance-specific. Open Setup, then Company Information, and note your instance. Check it against the Maintenance Calendar on Trust [2]. The release notes point to the same place, directing you to select Instances and then your instance.
A sandbox had to be created or refreshed before 5 p.m. PT on August 27 to land on a preview instance. If you missed it, the fallback is a pre-release Developer Edition org, which contains none of your data, metadata, or customizations. That makes it useful for exploring features and unsuitable for regression testing.
Which Salesforce Winter ’27 Updates Enforce Automatically?
Four release updates enforce with Winter ’27: three accessibility enhancements for high-magnification viewing, plus Enable Profile Filtering. No action is needed for them to take effect.
The Salesforce Winter ’27 release notes [3] list four updates under “Enforced with This Release.” These are the only Salesforce Winter ’27 updates that enforce automatically on your upgrade date.
Enable Profile Filtering. The Profile Filtering setting is enabled by default. Users cannot view profile names other than their own unless they hold the View All Profiles permission. If a role requires visibility into all profile names, assign the permission before enforcement. First available in Summer ’26.
Three accessibility enhancements, all supporting WCAG 2.2 Resize and Reflow, which adapt Lightning Experience behavior at high magnification:
- Cards, docked containers, menu lists, and panels. First available Summer ’26.
- Date pickers, popovers, bottom utility bars, and record headers. First available Winter ’26, originally scheduled for Summer ’26, postponed to Winter ’27.
- Page headers and modal windows above 200% zoom. First available Summer ’25, originally scheduled for Summer ’26, postponed to Winter ’27.
The first two depend on the page headers and modal windows update, so treat them as one body of testing work rather than three separate tasks.
Your Setup Page Lists the Updates. It Won't Tell You Which Integrations Break.
Which Winter ’27 Updates Were Postponed or Canceled?
The OAuth username-password retirement moved to February 20, 2027. Instanced URL enforcement moved to Spring ’27. Adopt Authorized Email Domains was canceled and replaced.
Four items widely described as Winter ’27 enforcements are not in this release.
- Retirement of OAuth 2.0 Username-Password Flow for Connected Apps. Still coming, and it still breaks every connected app integration using the flow. But the release notes state it was scheduled for Winter ’27 and the enforcement date was postponed to February 20, 2027. First available Spring ’26. Migration paths are the OAuth 2.0 web-server flow or the client credentials flow.
- Update Instanced URLs in API Traffic. First available Summer ’25, scheduled for Spring ’26, postponed to Spring ’27. API traffic must use the org’s My Domain login URL.
- Adopt Authorized Email Domains. Canceled. The release notes list it under Canceled Updates, removed from the Release Updates node in Setup, replaced by Maintain Your Email Verification Exception.
- Modify Transaction Security Policy Permission. Not present anywhere in the Winter ’27 release notes.
Two other items carry hard dates that fall inside the Winter ’27 planning window even though they are not Winter ’27 enforcements:
- Restrict the OAuth 2.0 Device Flow to Local External Client Apps, enforced November 30, 2026. Connected apps must migrate to external client apps to keep using the device flow.
- Maintain Your Email Verification Exception, enforced December 1, 2026. If you previously had Salesforce Support disable user email verification, configure an authorized email domain setting to preserve that exception. On enforcement, Salesforce removes the existing domain allowlists. Available starting in Winter ’27.
Salesforce states in the release notes that each update is announced with its schedule as soon as that schedule is known, and that updates are occasionally postponed or canceled. Winter ’27 is a demonstration of exactly that. Every date in this article is accurate as of the release notes last updated August 20, 2026, and worth re-checking in Setup before you plan around it.
Test Profile Filtering as a Standard User
Profile Filtering is the only Winter ’27 enforcement that changes what data users can access, and it is quiet. Logic reading the running user’s own profile is unaffected. Logic reading another user’s profile, such as a flow evaluating a record owner’s profile name, returns nothing rather than raising an error.
The trap is that administrators hold View All Profiles, so testing as yourself passes when a standard user would fail. Use login-as and walk your automation list from a standard user’s session.
Where practical, rewrite the logic so it does not depend on profile names, rather than granting View All Profiles broadly to work around the change.
What’s New in Agentforce Sales?
Sales Cloud is now Agentforce Sales, and Sales features ship as often as monthly rather than only at release boundaries. Two further renames land in this release: Agentforce Lead Nurturing is now Agentforce Engagement, and Forecasting is now Pipeline Forecasting.
- AI agents for Sales. Agentforce Engagement agents can now be created in the new Agentforce Builder in Agentforce Studio, which is based on Agent Script and allows custom business rules and guardrails. Agents built with Agent Script use the new Builder while legacy agents continue in the older Builder in Setup. Teams also get finer control over which Engagement emails require manual review, with the option to review every email, initial outreach only, or route approvals through a custom flow.
- Agentforce Prospecting adds four capabilities: scheduling agent runs on set days and times with control over frequency and prospects assigned per rep, prioritizing contacts who have engaged in the past 12 months, researching accounts owned by users outside the dedicated prospecting group, and an Agent Activity tab showing how many records a session reviewed and why each was qualified or ruled out.
- Einstein Conversation Insights surfaces AI-generated suggested next steps once a meeting transcript is available, with a meeting summary, key decisions, and contextual next steps on the event record in the Salesforce mobile app. Post-Meeting Voice Notes capture detail from conversations that were not transcribed, processed on-device and associated with the recording user.
- Pipeline Forecasting brings deal risks, methodology scores, contact insights, agent activity, and activity heatmaps into the forecasting pipeline.
- Call Coaching extends to video calls. Teams define up to eight active competencies and rate reps against them from the Coaching tab on video call records. With Agentforce for Sales, an AI coaching agent evaluates recorded calls automatically; without it, ratings are manual on a three-point scale.
- Relationship Maps let reps update stakeholder details, including opportunity roles, departments, and notes, from the side panel without leaving the map, and remove or restore connections. Available in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions with Sales, and Agentforce 1 Sales Edition.
- Einstein Activity Capture gains keyword and AI-powered detection to exclude email containing sensitive content, including legal matters, protected health topics, and passwords. Wildcard rules exclude calendar events and email associated with specific web domains. Partner Portal users can also connect Google or Microsoft Office 365 calendars, letting customers book on partner calendars through Salesforce Scheduler with real-time availability checks.
- Microsoft Graph migration. Einstein Activity Capture’s Microsoft Office 365 authentication must move to Microsoft Graph before Microsoft retires Exchange Web Services in October 2026.
- Retirement notices. Activity 360 Reporting, Activity Metrics, and the Activities Analytics Dashboard are being retired. The Sales Engagement Performance Dashboard is also scheduled for retirement.
Most Sales Cloud Orgs Run a 2019 Configuration with 2026 Features Bolted On.
What’s New in Agentforce Service?
The Salesforce Winter ’27 Agentforce features for Service mix AI assistance with fixes to long-standing gaps.
- Deletable Case Milestones. Milestones can now be deleted in bulk through Data Loader or programmatically via Apex, so records hold only relevant entries. This addresses storage accumulation in high-volume orgs from outdated or wrongly associated milestones, and resolves an IdeaExchange request from 2017.
- Original Case Attachments Inline. Files added when a case was created now display as visual tiles directly under the Case Description field. Up to three tiles show at once, with a link opening a popover for additional files. Enabled under Setup, Support Settings, Show Original Case Attachments.
- Revamped Enhanced Case Merge UI (beta). Case merge settings consolidate onto one setup page covering Case Merge, Enhanced Case Merge (Beta), and Case Merge for Omni-Channel (Beta), with access to Duplicate Rules and Matching Rules from the same place.
- AI Writing Tools for Case Comments. Reps can polish, expand, or summarize a draft comment in the comment editor, or refine it with specific instructions based on a Refine Case Comment prompt template. Case Subject and Description fields can also be translated on the fly. Requires Agentforce for Service and Einstein for Service.
- Knowledge adds three capabilities: Knowledge Blocks for reusing modular read-only content across articles, article drafting from any record using custom prompt templates through Einstein Knowledge Creation, and Knowledge Similarity, which scores a draft against existing articles so authors can update rather than duplicate. Requires a Salesforce Knowledge add-on license.
- Multi-Intent Article Recommendations. Agentforce Article Recommendations for Cases can identify up to three distinct intents in a single case, run a targeted search for each, and merge the results into one ranked list, rather than letting the most prominent topic crowd out the rest.
- Automatic Work Summaries extend to Enhanced Messaging sessions and Voice calls, generating when the session or call ends. Reps can review and save, or admins can configure automatic saving. Language support for summaries expands, and Service Replies for Email are grounded in Enterprise Knowledge sources. Requires the Agentforce for Service add-on or Agentforce 1 Edition.
- Chat Reroute Notifications. When a rep loses connectivity and a conversation is rerouted, the customer receives a customized auto-response explaining what is happening. Applies to Enhanced Messaging and Enhanced Chat.
- HR Service adds a Cornerstone integration and expands the prebuilt Agentforce library with agents for pay and rewards queries, shift schedules, and onboarding tasks. HR Service deploys to Microsoft Teams with a single click, and five templates were added to the HR workflow library.
- Self-Service adds a guided setup wizard, automatic messaging deployment, proactive troubleshooting, and mobile notifications.
- Retirement notice. Work Summaries for Case (Beta) is being retired.
What’s New in Agentforce Marketing?
Two themes run through Marketing this release: two new Agentforce agents, and content management, which features prominently following Salesforce’s acquisition of Contentful in June 2026.
Marketing Cloud Next, also referred to as Agentforce Marketing:
- Agentforce Marketing Goals Agent selects the campaign, channel, content, and timing for each individual customer. Marketers get visibility into what the agent is doing and define how much it handles autonomously.
- Agentforce Content Agent generates, refines, and publishes on-brand content and images for email, SMS, MMS, and RCS campaigns in a collaborative AI workspace, grounded in marketing briefs, customer data, and brand guidelines. Teams review and approve before publishing.
- Marketing Completion Actions return as a core capability, removing the need to build a dedicated flow to notify a user, send an autoresponder, or assign a lead.
- Post-Send Link Editing. Salesforce Customer Support can update the destination URL of a tracked link after send. Changes apply to all sends of that published content version and take effect for subsequent clicks within roughly five minutes. Links containing a merge field redirect to one static URL. All edits are audited with user, timestamp, and old and new values.
- Email Deliverability Health. A 0 to 100 Email Deliverability Health Score with monitoring across mailbox providers and message types, plus automated alerts at critical thresholds.
- Cross-Channel Personalization. Personalization logic can be reused rather than recreated per message, with Handlebars and AMPscript support extended to SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, in-app, and push notifications.
- Landing Pages and Forms support Handlebars and AMPscript, plus custom HTML forms.
- Distributed Marketing and Alerts adds required phrases and character limits in templates, a scheduled flow template for recurring sends, expanded bulk sending, and Agentforce-powered template recommendations.
- Built-in Language Variants let marketers translate an email in Email Builder using a built-in agent and refine each variant without disrupting layout.
Marketing Cloud Engagement adds a guided setup through Salesforce Go connecting accounts to Data 360, new match rules for customer profiles, smoother scheduled file activities, expanded WhatsApp options, conversational email support, additional security controls, and tools for AI-assisted operations.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement adds Agentforce capabilities plus campaign, audience management, and channel support enhancements.
Marketing Intelligence, the platform that unifies marketing performance data and measures ROI across channels, adds expanded data ingestion, historical backfill, pipeline and connection monitoring, data validation, and AI-guided campaign recommendations.
Salesforce Personalization in Marketing Cloud Next receives updates across both the Salesforce Personalization and Marketing Cloud Personalization products.
Loyalty Management adds smarter transaction journal and member currency creation, activity-based currencies with flexible expiration models for subtypes, multi-milestone rewards, and AI-powered personalized promotion targets.
Real-Time Offer Management adds personalized targets for building promotions and customizing how they are adjudicated.
What’s New in Data 360?
Data 360 ships on a monthly cadence rather than a seasonal one. The release notes state that changes included in Winter ’27 are generally listed under October 2026, so the seasonal view is thin by design.
What is documented for August 2026 is the Snowflake Zero-Copy V2 Connector for data shares. Elsewhere in the notes, Data Detect in Salesforce Shield can now scan Data 360 data lake objects, with a single policy supporting up to 100 DLOs across multiple data spaces, and a guided flow for policy creation.
What Are the Salesforce Winter ’27 Flow Updates?
Flow Builder gains intent-based element categories, smart search, multi-record screen flows from list views, a Time screen component, and a reusable Flow Test Mode in beta.
The Salesforce Winter ’27 Flow updates are among the most visible changes in this release for admins.
Flow Builder
- Flow Test Mode (beta) replaces the previous debug and testing modes, combining both in one interface with reusable, saved test scenarios and mock outputs for Action and Subflow elements.
- A User Context run option enforces the running user’s permissions regardless of how the flow is launched, so the flow can only access and act on data that user can reach.
- Element groups let you label, describe, collapse, and expand sections of a flow.
- Screen flows can process multiple records launched from list views and related lists, passing the selected record IDs as a text collection.
- Save-time validation catches missing required fields on Create Records elements and field length violations when you save, rather than at run time.
- The Salesforce Cosmos theme brings SLDS 2 to Flow Builder, alongside a denser canvas that shows more of a flow without scrolling.
Apex and API
- Higher Apex heap limits, with elastic limits applying to batch jobs.
- Apex integration tests that share test data and call real HTTP endpoints.
- Apex Symbol API (beta) for building development tools.
- Recompile only invalid Apex classes and triggers instead of the full set.
- Namespace shadowing conflicts prevented in dynamic managed Apex SOQL queries.
- Compiler warnings for Apex saved at API versions 9.0 through 19.0.
- API version 68.0.
API Catalog centralizes services including APIs and MCP servers, and can bring in APIs from MuleSoft, Heroku, and Apex for use in Agentforce agents and flows.
Items marked beta carry a caveat worth repeating. The release notes state that beta, pilot, and developer preview features are not guaranteed to reach general availability within any particular timeframe, or at all, and advise basing purchase decisions only on generally available functionality.
What Enforces After Winter ’27 Through Summer ’27?
Fifteen release updates enforce between November 2026 and Summer ’27, including six that concern how integrations authenticate, the end of Salesforce to Salesforce, and the connected apps migration.
Winter ’27 is light on enforcement. The next three quarters are not.
Before Spring ’27
- Restrict the OAuth 2.0 Device Flow to Local External Client Apps. November 30, 2026.
- Maintain Your Email Verification Exception. December 1, 2026.
Spring ’27
- Retirement of OAuth 2.0 Username-Password Flow for Connected Apps. February 20, 2027.
- OAuth User-Agent and Hybrid User-Agent Flows Retirement. February 20, 2027. Migrate to the web-server or hybrid web-server flow with PKCE.
- SOAP API login() in versions 31.0 through 64.0 retired. The release notes group this update with Spring ’27 while stating the call stops being supported in Summer ’27.
- Update Instanced URLs in API Traffic.
- Salesforce to Salesforce is being retired. Migration options given are Partner Cloud, Data Cloud One, MuleSoft Anypoint, or MuleSoft for Flow.
- Salesforce Connect cross-org adapter legacy authentication retired. Password and OAuth 2.0 methods give way to named credentials.
- Remove Non-Public Fields from Custom Object Data in Aura Action Responses.
- View Setup Audit Trail Permission to Access Setup Audit Trail.
- Update Apex Code and Flows for Changed Sharing Recalculation Behavior. Some sharing recalculations now run asynchronously.
- Accessibility enhancements for To Do lists and Lightning dual listboxes at high magnification. First available Summer ’26.
Summer ’27
- Migrate All Connected Apps to External Client Apps. Salesforce ends support for connected apps.
- Block Apex Anonymous Code Execution from Managed Packages.
- Optimize Performance for Revenue Management. The Configuration API is optimized to reduce processing times in Product Configurator. Available starting in Winter ’27.
Read together, these are one project rather than fifteen. Six of them concern how integrations authenticate, and the same inventory serves all six.
How to Prepare for Salesforce Winter ’27
Preparation splits cleanly by role. Note that most of the work below is not about the Salesforce Winter ’27 features themselves, but about the enforcement wave behind them.
| If You Administer a Salesforce Org | If You Own Architecture or Integrations |
|---|---|
|
Open Setup, then Release Updates, and note which items appear for your org and their enforcement dates. The list varies by org. |
Build one authentication inventory covering the username-password flow, the device flow, user-agent and hybrid user-agent flows, and SOAP login(). Pull Login History and review Connected Apps OAuth Usage. |
|
Enable Profile Filtering in a preview sandbox and walk your automation list via login-as as a standard user. |
Search repositories, middleware exports, and config files for hardcoded instanced hostnames, ahead of the Spring ’27 enforcement. |
|
Assign View All Profiles to users whose role requires seeing all profile names. |
Identify any Salesforce to Salesforce connections and pick a migration target. |
|
View business-critical Lightning pages above 200% magnification with the accessibility test runs enabled, and check custom components. |
Inventory cross-org adapter external data sources and move them to named credentials. |
|
If you hold a Support-granted email verification exception, configure an authorized email domain setting before December 1, 2026. |
Scope the connected app to external client app migration now. It affects the device flow in November 2026 and everything else by Summer ’27. |
What to Do Before Your Upgrade Date
Winter ’27 asks little of most orgs. Four release updates enforce, three of them accessibility work, and Profile Filtering is the only change that alters what data users can reach. Testing it well takes an afternoon.
The larger job is the twelve months behind it. Between November 2026 and Summer ’27, Salesforce retires four authentication methods, ends Salesforce to Salesforce, and stops supporting connected apps. Those are not separate projects. They share a single inventory: every integration, what it authenticates with, and who owns it. Teams that build that inventory during the Winter ’27 preview window spend the next three releases working through a list. Teams that wait spend them finding integrations the hard way, usually on a Monday morning.
Start with your own org rather than any published list, including this one. Open Setup, enter Release Updates in the Quick Find box, and select Release Updates. That page shows only the updates relevant to the features your org uses, with the enforcement date for your instance. Where a test run is offered, use it to examine changes to your customizations before the Complete Steps By date. For your upgrade date, look up your instance on Salesforce Trust.
If that inventory turns out larger than expected, the authentication migration is worth scoping with an implementation partner well before the February 2027 dates arrive. It is a predictable piece of work, and it becomes considerably less predictable in the last six weeks.