Introduction
AWS continues to innovate and expand its cloud services. Below are the most impactful updates from May 2026 that developers and cloud architects should be aware of.
Key Updates
1. AWS Deadline Cloud now supports browsing job attachments in the monitor
Published: May 30, 2026
AWS Deadline Cloud now supports browsing job attachment files directly within the Deadline Cloud monitor. AWS Deadline Cloud is a fully managed service that simplifies render management for teams creating computer-generated graphics and visual effects for film, television, broadcasting, web content, and design.
The Deadline Cloud job attachments feature simplifies managing input and output files for render jobs by handling uploads and downloads through Amazon S3. Previously, you could download all outputs for a job, but you couldn’t easily see which specific files were attached as inputs or generated as outputs. With this new browsing capability, you can now view all attached files for a given job directly from the monitor in the browser or desktop application, clearly organized by inputs and outputs. You can also download individual files as needed, making it easy to retrieve specific assets without downloading everything.
For more information, visit the Deadline Cloud product page and the AWS Deadline Cloud documentation.
2. Amazon Connect Customer expands generative AI-powered post-contact summaries to eight new languages
Published: May 29, 2026
Amazon Connect Customer now supports generative AI-powered post-contact summaries in eight additional language families: Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Post-contact summaries also now support non-US variations of English, including British English, Australian English, and other regional locales, ensuring summaries reflect locally appropriate spelling and terminology.
Generative AI-powered post-contact summaries provide agents and managers with concise, structured overviews of customer conversations across voice, chat, and email channels, eliminating the need to read full transcripts. With this expansion, organizations can automatically generate summaries in the language of the conversation, helping agents complete after-contact work faster and enabling managers to review contacts across languages. For example, a global support organization can now generate post-contact summaries for calls handled in French, German, or Japanese, giving supervisors visibility into service quality across all regions.
The newly supported languages are available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect Customer post-contact summaries are available. To learn more, refer to View generative AI-powered post-contact summaries in the Amazon Connect Customer Administrator Guide. For more information about Amazon Connect Customer, visit the Amazon Connect Customer website.
3. Amazon EC2 X8i instances are now available in additional regions
Published: May 28, 2026
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) X8i instances are now available in the Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and AWS GovCloud (US-West) regions. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available only on AWS. X8i instances are SAP-certified and deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud. They provide up to 43% higher performance, 1.5x more memory capacity (up to 6 TB), and 3.3x more memory bandwidth compared to previous-generation X2i instances.
X8i instances are designed for memory-intensive workloads such as SAP HANA, large databases, data analytics, and Electronic Design Automation (EDA). Compared to X2i instances, X8i instances offer up to 50% higher SAPS performance, up to 47% faster PostgreSQL performance, 88% faster Memcached performance, and 46% faster AI inference performance. X8i instances come in 14 sizes, from large to 96xlarge, including two bare metal options.
To get started, visit the AWS Management Console. X8i instances can be purchased via Savings Plans, On-Demand Instances, and Spot Instances. For more information, visit the X8i instances page.
4. Amazon Lightsail CDN distributions now support IPv6-only instances as origins
Published: May 24, 2026
Amazon Lightsail content delivery network (CDN) distributions now support IPv6-only instances as origins. This feature enables customers to use IPv6-only instances to deliver content through Lightsail CDN distributions with low latency and high transfer speeds worldwide. With this launch, customers can run their websites and applications on cost-effective IPv6-only instances while seamlessly serving content to all end users, including those on networks that don’t yet support IPv6 connectivity.
Previously, only IPv4 and dual-stack instances were supported as origins for Lightsail CDN distributions. With this update, customers can also use IPv6-only instances as origins, making applications running on those instances accessible to all end users, regardless of whether they have IPv6 connectivity. Lightsail CDN distributions support multiple origin types, including instances, containers, buckets, and load balancers.
Amazon Lightsail is available in 16 AWS Regions, including US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (London), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Malaysia). To get started, visit the Lightsail console. For pricing and other details, see Amazon Lightsail pricing.
5. Amazon MWAA now supports Apache Airflow 3.2
Published: May 23, 2026
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA) now supports Apache Airflow version 3.2, the latest major release of the popular open-source workflow orchestration framework. Amazon MWAA is a managed service that lets you run Apache Airflow at scale without managing the underlying infrastructure. This release brings new data-aware scheduling capabilities and developer productivity improvements to teams building and operating data pipelines on AWS.
With Apache Airflow 3.2, you can now use asset partitioning to trigger downstream DAGs based on specific slices of data, such as a date-partitioned S3 path, rather than an entire asset. This gives data engineering teams more precise control over pipeline execution. The release also expands Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) capabilities with a full audit history view for approvals, HITL support for the AgenticOperator, and synchronous callback support for Deadline Alerts. Additional improvements include Grid View virtualization for faster rendering of large DAGs, full XCom management from the Airflow UI, and async callable support in PythonOperator.
You can launch a new Apache Airflow 3.2 environment on Amazon MWAA, or upgrade from version 2.11 or later, with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console in all currently supported Amazon MWAA Regions. To learn more about Apache Airflow 3.2, see the Amazon MWAA documentation and the Apache Airflow 3.2 change log in the Apache Airflow documentation.
Apache, Apache Airflow, and Airflow are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.
6. Amazon SES now offers inbox placement metrics and blocklist monitoring
Published: May 20, 2026
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) has launched a new set of deliverability features that give customers deeper insight into outbound sending performance and reputation. Customers can now see the percentage of messages that land in recipient spam folders based on samples of industry data, as well as when their domains and IPs are listed on public email sender blocklists. This makes it easier to optimize sending practices and content to maximize customer engagement.
Previously, customers could use SES Virtual Deliverability Manager to visualize the end-to-end journey of email deliverability metrics, including delivery rates, bounce rates of various types, and complaint, open, and click rates. However, they did not have visibility into how many emails were placed in spam folders, making it difficult to estimate how many messages were actually seen by recipients. Now, based on representative industry data, customers can see inbox placement rates by sending domain and campaign. They can also proactively test candidate email content to estimate inbox placement rates at top mailbox providers before sending to target recipients. Additionally, customers gain passive monitoring of industry blocklist activity, helping them identify when reputation changes may affect their ability to send email to mailbox providers.
SES supports inbox placement rates and blocklist monitoring in all AWS commercial Regions where SES is available. For more information, see the documentation for the Virtual Deliverability Manager global deliverability features.
7. AWS announces ExtendDB, an open source DynamoDB-compatible adapter
Published: May 19, 2026
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced version 0.1 of ExtendDB, an open source project that implements the Amazon DynamoDB API with pluggable storage backends. Amazon DynamoDB is a serverless, fully managed NoSQL database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. ExtendDB enables application developers, platform teams, and enterprise architects to use the DynamoDB programming model in environments where the DynamoDB managed service is not available—including developer laptops, on-premises data centers, and disconnected edge sites—without rewriting application code.
ExtendDB implements the DynamoDB control plane and data plane APIs, including operations on tables, items, and streams. The reference storage backend at launch is PostgreSQL, and the pluggable architecture allows the community to add new storage backends without modifying the core adapter. Developers can use ExtendDB for high-fidelity local development and continuous integration testing, and to operate DynamoDB-shaped workloads in on-premises data centers backed by a supported database.
ExtendDB is maintained by AWS, released under the Apache 2.0 license, and developed in the open on GitHub. AWS invites the community to contribute backend implementations, submit feedback, and participate in the project’s evolution. To learn more, see the ExtendDB project page and the AWS Database Blog post. To get started or contribute, visit the GitHub repository.
8. Amazon Redshift Serverless now offers 4-RPU Minimum Capacity in 7 additional AWS Regions
Published: May 18, 2026
Amazon Redshift now allows you to get started with Amazon Redshift Serverless using a lower data warehouse base capacity configuration of 4 Redshift Processing Units (RPUs) in the Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Canada (Central), Europe (London), South America (SĂŁo Paulo), AWS GovCloud (US-East), and AWS GovCloud (US-West) regions. Amazon Redshift Serverless measures data warehouse capacity in RPUs. One RPU provides 16 GB of memory, and you pay only for the duration of workloads you run, in RPU-hours, on a per-second basis. Previously, the minimum base capacity required to run Amazon Redshift Serverless was 8 RPUs. You can now start using Amazon Redshift Serverless for as low as $1.50 per hour and pay only for the compute capacity your data warehouse consumes when it is active. For predictable workloads, Amazon Redshift Serverless capacity reservations with 1-year and 3-year terms provide additional price-performance benefits.
Amazon Redshift Serverless enables users to run and scale analytics without managing data warehouse clusters. The new lower capacity configuration makes Amazon Redshift Serverless suitable for both production and development environments, particularly when workloads require minimal compute and memory resources. This entry-level configuration supports data warehouses with up to 32 TB of Redshift managed storage, offering a maximum of 100 columns per table and 64 GB of memory.
To get started, see the Amazon Redshift Serverless feature page, user documentation, and API Reference.
9. Announcing Region Expansion of P4de instances on SageMaker Notebook Instances
Published: May 10, 2026
AWS has announced the general availability of Amazon EC2 P4de instances in Asia Pacific (Tokyo) on SageMaker notebook instances.
Amazon EC2 P4de instances are powered by 8 NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 80 GB of high-performance HBM2e GPU memory, 2x more than the GPUs in current P4d instances. The new P4de instances provide a total of 640 GB of GPU memory, delivering up to 60% better ML training performance along with 20% lower training cost compared to P4d instances. The improved performance allows customers to reduce model training times and accelerate time to market. Increased GPU memory on P4de also benefits workloads that need to train on large datasets of high-resolution data.
For guidance on setting up and using JupyterLab and CodeEditor applications on SageMaker Studio and SageMaker notebook instances, refer to the developer guides.
10. Amazon SageMaker AI now supports OpenAI-compatible APIs for inference endpoints
Published: May 5, 2026
Amazon SageMaker Inference now supports OpenAI-compatible APIs, allowing you to use familiar tools and frameworks—such as the OpenAI SDK, LangChain, and Strands Agents—to connect directly to your SageMaker endpoints. Switching requires nothing more than changing an endpoint URL—no custom integration code, no SDK wrappers, and no rewrites.
With this launch, you no longer need to adopt a different API format or change your authentication approach. Simply change your endpoint URL, and your existing SDK calls, streaming logic, and framework integrations continue to work as-is. You immediately gain the ability to choose your own GPU instances, keep data in your own VPC, run any open source or fine-tuned model, and scale with auto-scaling policies tuned to your workload. Authentication uses existing AWS credentials with automatic token refresh, so there is nothing additional to manage in production.
This capability is available in the following Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Frankfurt), South America (SĂŁo Paulo), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Europe (London), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Canada (Central). To learn more and get started, read the launch blog or visit the SageMaker Inference documentation.
Summary
Key Highlights
- Performance Improvements: Enhanced scalability and efficiency across multiple AWS services.
- Security Enhancements: New capabilities to strengthen your cloud security posture.
- Developer Experience: Improved tools and integrations for faster, more productive development.
- Cost Optimization: New options for more efficient resource management and cost control.
What This Means for You
These updates demonstrate AWS’s ongoing commitment to:
- Improving application performance and reliability
- Enhancing security and compliance capabilities
- Reducing operational complexity
- Enabling faster time-to-market for cloud applications
Conclusion
The AWS updates from May 2026 bring meaningful improvements across infrastructure, security, analytics, and developer tooling. Whether you’re building new applications or optimizing existing ones, these enhancements provide valuable opportunities to improve your cloud architecture and developer workflows.
Stay tuned for more updates, and remember to check the AWS What’s New page for the latest announcements.
Last updated: June 2, 2026