The New SharePoint 2026: Discover, Publish and Build Explained

You open SharePoint and pause. The app bar on the left suddenly looks completely different. Where Followed Sites and Saved for Later used to be, three unfamiliar areas now appear: Discover, Publish and Build. The navigation you knew is gone. You wonder: where do I find my sites now? Where do I create a new list? And what do I need «Amplify» for?

Microsoft has been rolling out the new SharePoint globally since mid-June 2026. Completion is planned for mid-July 2026, so depending on your organisation you are either seeing the new design already today or in the coming weeks. It is the biggest overhaul of the SharePoint interface in years.

The good news: the new structure follows a simple logic. Once you have understood the three areas, you find your way around much faster than before. Let me explain what sits behind each area and how you put it to productive use straight away.

Why Microsoft rebuilt SharePoint from the ground up

The old SharePoint navigation had grown organically over the years and was hard for new users to make sense of. Followed Sites, Saved for Later, News, Sites, Documents, plenty of entries, but no clear logic behind them.

Microsoft built the new SharePoint around three core activities:

• Finding content (Discover)
• Publishing content (Publish)
• Building solutions (Build)

Everything else is subordinate to that logic. On top of this, Microsoft is applying neutral theming to the global surfaces: the app bar and the higher-level navigation elements are kept more understated. The branding of your own SharePoint sites, logos, colours, hub navigation, stays completely unchanged.

Discover: your new starting point 🗺️

Discover is the entry area of the new SharePoint. You find six sub-areas there: Overview, Sites, News, People, Favorites and Recent. The exact labels may vary slightly depending on your version.

Favorites replace Followed Sites: the old system is being retired in favour of Favorites. Marking a site as a favourite is just as easy as it was before, the star icon on a SharePoint site is all you need. Your existing followed sites are migrated to Favorites automatically, so you lose nothing.

Saved for Later becomes Favorites: pages and news posts you used to save for later now appear under Favorites. They move over automatically too, so you do not have to save anything again. (Corrected: the first version of this post said the feature would disappear.)

How to get the most out of Discover:

1. Open SharePoint via the app launcher (the waffle menu) or directly via sharepoint.com.
2. Click «Discover» in the app bar on the left.
3. Click «Favorites» to see the sites you have marked. Use the star icon on a site to add more.
4. Under «News» you see current news from your organisation, under «Sites» all the sites you have access to.

Tip: if you work in a large organisation, it pays off to mark 5 to 10 frequently used sites as favourites right away. That saves you a lot of pointless searching over the next few weeks.

Publish: creating and sharing content 📣

Publish is the area for everyone who produces content in SharePoint: pages, news and communication material for the whole organisation.

The centrepiece of Publish is Amplify, a new tool for corporate communication. With Amplify you can create news posts and campaigns that appear on several SharePoint sites at once. You used to have to create a news post separately on every single site. Now you create it once and decide where it should show up.

What you find in Publish:

• All the pages and news posts you have created in one place
• Amplify for organisation-wide communication campaigns (requires the corresponding permissions)
• Templates for pages and news posts

How to create a news post with Publish:

1. Click «Publish» in the app bar.
2. Select «New News Post».
3. Choose the target site or use Amplify for several sites at once.
4. Create the page with the familiar page editor.
5. Click «Publish», done.

The quality of your news posts has not changed, only the route there is more direct. Anyone who used to create news posts on the home page of a site will find the same editor, now reachable from one central place.

Build: creating sites, lists and libraries 🔨

Build is the area for everyone who assembles SharePoint solutions, from simple lists all the way to complete intranet sites.

The options for creating new sites used to be scattered across various menus. Build now bundles all creation and management options in one place.

What you find in Build:

• Create new SharePoint sites
• Create new lists
• Set up new document libraries
• Create and manage SharePoint agents, for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence

How to create a new list:

1. Click «Build» in the app bar.
2. Select «New List».
3. Choose a template or start with a blank list.
4. Give the list a name and choose the target site.
5. Click «Create», the list is available immediately.

SharePoint agents: if you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, Build also shows an area for agents. 🤖 You can create agents that are based on specific document libraries or sites and answer questions about their content. That is particularly useful for knowledge management and internal documentation.

What happens to OneDrive

OneDrive remains a standalone area in the new app bar, right next to Discover, Publish and Build. Your personal file storage has not changed. Shared files, shares and sync settings stay identical.

The only difference: switching between OneDrive and SharePoint is more direct than before. You no longer navigate through the SharePoint start menu, you simply click between the areas in the app bar.

What stays and what changes

The new SharePoint uses a neutral, light design for all global elements, which stops the system navigation from competing with the branding of individual sites.

What does not change:

• The logo and the colours of your SharePoint sites (site branding)
• The hub navigation of individual sites
• Permissions, documents, lists, everything stays exactly where it is

What does change:

• The design of the global app bar (now a light neutral)
• The position of some navigation elements
• Followed Sites and Saved for Later are replaced by Favorites
• Featured Links is being retired, Microsoft recommends global navigation instead

When will the new design reach you?

General availability began on 15 June 2026. Microsoft originally wanted to finish by mid-July, but according to MC1240699 the rollout was expected to be complete worldwide by mid to late September 2026. By now every organisation should have the new design.

If you are responsible for IT in your organisation: during the preview, the new design could be switched on early in the admin center. Since targeted release and general availability, according to Microsoft, there is no way to switch back at either organisation or user level. Earlier preview settings are overridden.

Practical tip: bring your team along in 10 minutes 💡

The new SharePoint looks quite different at first glance, which leaves some people confused even though the logic behind it is simpler than before. My recommendation is to send a short Teams chat message or an email ahead of the rollout: «SharePoint will look different soon, no data is lost, all your documents are still there. Here are the three new areas in brief: Discover to find things, Publish to share things, Build to create things.» Ten minutes of communication save you hours at the help desk.

Conclusion

Discover to find. Publish to share. Build to create. The new SharePoint 2026 makes the navigation more logical, even if the first few minutes take some getting used to. Open SharePoint today and have a look at the three new areas. Your bearings come back faster than you expect. Give it a go right now.