Business Central 2025 wave 2 (BC27): Get early access preview versions as a partner – Early Access Preview (Next Major) environment in Cloud/SaaS

Hi, Readers.
Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 wave 2 (BC27) is generally available. More details: General Available: Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 release wave 2 (BC27).

I will continue to test and share some new features that I hope will be helpful. In this post, I would like to talk about Get early access preview versions as a partner.

Get early access preview versions as a partner:

Business value:
Tenants with the partner sandbox license get early access to preview environments for the next major Business Central version, giving you a head start in exploring new capabilities and preparing for changes ahead of general availability

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2025wave2/smb/dynamics365-business-central/get-early-access-preview-versions-as-partner?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

Tenants with the partner sandbox license automatically get an extra environment quota for a sandbox environment on the early access preview version. You use the preview without affecting your existing sandbox environment quota. (The following screenshots are from Microsoft’s official video)

For a detailed explanation, you can check out the video below.
What’s Cooking in Business Central: Early Access Preview:

As a partner, you can buy the Dynamics 365 Business Central Partner Sandbox license. You’ll need a valid Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) ID. You must also have at least five employees who will use the partner sandboxes that you create using this license. This offer was made available in February 2022 to support partners that need non-production environments to learn, test, and deliver end-to-end customer demos with their solutions. More details: Dynamics 365 Business Central: New Partner Sandbox Environments

For AppSource app development, we need to ensure not only that the current version can run, but also that it can work normally in the Next Major version. Because the Cloud (SaaS) version does not support the Next Major version, partners have had to use Docker. With this wave (BC27), early preview environments automatically update to newer builds as development progresses, so you can continuously test and give feedback on evolving features. This proactive access supports better planning, smoother adoption, and deeper engagement with the product roadmap. However, please note that this is only available in Partner Sandbox license.

Good to know:

• Parnter Sandbox license is required for Early Access Preview (EAP)
• Microsoft update EAP environments to newer builds weekly
• EAP environments may be deleted without notice
• Early previews are available for the DE, GB, and US localizations.

Great, give it a try!!!😁

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU