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August 17 outage
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
GitHub's August 17 outage lasted 7 hours and 47 minutes, disrupting services worldwide.
The outage hit developers and organizations, highlighting reliance on the platform.
Background
On August 17, 2026, GitHub experienced a major outage that lasted 7 hours and 47 minutes, affecting core services like github.com, authentication, Actions, APIs, pull requests, issues, and Copilot. The incident disrupted software development for millions of users globally, prompting an apology from GitHub and a commitment to improve reliability.
How it unfolded
- Aug 17, 2026GitHub outage begins, disrupting github.com, authentication, Actions, APIs, pull requests, issues, and Copilot.
- Aug 17, 2026 09:30GitHub finds the source of the problem and begins recovery efforts.
- Aug 17, 2026 10:00Outage is under control, with services recovering; Copilot remains an active incident.
- Aug 17, 2026Outage ends after 7 hours and 47 minutes.
- Aug 20, 2026GitHub publishes a blog post detailing the outage and steps to improve reliability.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- GitHub apologized and said it is taking steps to improve reliability.
- Analysts
- GeekWire noted the outage is a setback for Microsoft's coding platform.
Still unverified
The exact cause of the GitHub outage has not been disclosed by the company.