Microsoft Foundry MAI-Image-2.6 Setup: 13 Steps [2026]

Microsoft spent the past two years reselling other companies’ image models inside Azure. That changed on October 7, 2026, when Microsoft AI pushed its own MAI-Image-2.6 model into public preview inside Microsoft Foundry, the renamed and consolidated home for Azure AI Foundry’s model catalog. The company calls it “our strongest image model yet,” and it ships alongside a faster, cheaper sibling called MAI-Image-2.6-Flash.