Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog

Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 (Generally Available)

We have made Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 for our Azure Synapse Spark customers generally available for customers to start using it for their production workloads, while they get ready and prepare for migrating to Microsoft Fabric Spark.

What This Mean for You

You can now create Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5. The essential changes include features which come from upgrading Apache Spark to version 3.5 and Delta Lake 3.2. Please review the official release notes for Apache Spark 3.5 to check the complete list of fixes and features. In addition, review the migration guidelines between Spark 3.4 and 3.5 to assess potential changes to your applications, jobs and notebooks.

For additional details check Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 documentation.

What’s next?

We offer Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 to our Azure Synapse Spark customers. However, we strongly recommend that customers plan to migrate to Microsoft Fabric Spark to benefit from the latest innovations and optimizations exclusively available to Microsoft Fabric Spark. For example, the Native Execution Engine (NEE) significantly enhances query performance at no additional cost. Starter pools allow the creation of a Spark session within seconds, unified security in the lakehouse enables the definition of RLS (Row-Level Security) and CLS (Column-Level Security) for objects in the lakehouse. Additionally, newly announced Materialized Views and many other features are available.

Related blog posts

Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.5 (Generally Available)

December 16, 2025 by Alex Powers

As 2025 ends, we’re taking a moment to reflect on Microsoft Fabric’s second year in the market and the collective progress made alongside our community, customers, and partners. What began as a unified vision for data and AI has grown into a platform adopted by more than 28,000 organizations worldwide, anchored by OneLake and shaped … Continue reading “Microsoft Fabric 2025 holiday recap: Unified Data and AI Innovation”

December 15, 2025 by Arshad Ali

Fabric Runtime provides seamless integration within the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem, delivering a powerful environment for data engineering and data science projects built on Apache Spark. Fabric Runtime 2.0 is now available in Experimental Public Preview (EPP). This next-generation runtime is purpose-built for large-scale data computations in Microsoft Fabric and introduces key features and components that … Continue reading “Fabric Runtime 2.0 (Preview)”