Azure IaaS and Azure Local: announcements and updates (May 2026 – Weeks: 21 and 22)

This blog post covers the latest announcements and major updates for Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Local from May 2026 (Weeks 21-22). Highlights include the expansion of Multiparty private offers in Microsoft Marketplace to 30 European countries, enabling broader partner collaboration. The General Availability of Application Gateway for Containers service mesh integration with Istio simplifies secure north-south traffic and mTLS management for AKS workloads. Also announced are User Groups and IP address pools for Point-to-Site VPN connections (GA), allowing granular access control, and the Public Preview of summarized advertised gateway prefixes for ExpressRoute and VPN Gateway to reduce route management complexity.