Microsoft's cloud service Azure suffered major issues on Wednesday, affecting services worldwide including in Sweden. The disruptions began around 5 p.m. Swedish time and are expected to be resolved by midnight. Several Swedish sites like Systembolaget and SAS were temporarily down.
On Wednesday, October 29, 2025, Microsoft's cloud service Azure, which powers many websites and internet services, experienced major issues. According to Microsoft's site, the disruptions began around 5 p.m. Swedish time, and the company is working to resolve them. 'Customers may experience issues accessing Azure,' Microsoft wrote early on its site. 'We have taken steps that are expected to resolve the portal access issues shortly. We are actively investigating the underlying cause and taking further steps to mitigate the impact.'
Affected services include the Office suite, the game Minecraft, and Xbox Live. In Sweden, sites like Systembolaget, SAS, Tele2, and SJ reported problems, but many were back online late in the evening. The outage reporting site Downdetector noted issues starting around 5:30 p.m. Swedish time, with the Daily Mail describing it as half the world lacking internet.
This marks the second major disruption in a short period. Just over a week ago, Amazon's AWS cloud services went down in a more widespread incident. Some users reported AWS issues on Wednesday as well, but the company denied them. Cybersecurity expert Karl Emil Nikka dismisses a hacker attack as unlikely: 'This is a type of operational disruption we see in cloud services.' He adds that such problems often take minutes to hours to resolve, rarely days.
The outages highlight the central role of cloud services in internet infrastructure, where a few players handle much of the traffic.
