# Microsoft AI — MAI-Image-2.6 launches at No. 2 on Arena ahead of Google, Meta and xAI | Microsoft AI

- Company: Microsoft AI (microsoft.ai)
- Announced: 2026-08-10
- Category: model-update
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: yes
- Group: models
- Source: https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai/
- Record: https://forck.live/items/10751-mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai-microsoft
- Subject: MAI
- Models affected: MAI-Image-2.6, MAI-Image-2.6-Flash

Microsoft AI announced MAI-Image-2.6 and MAI-Image-2.6-Flash, which rank second on the Arena text-to-image leaderboard. The models improve by +79 Elo over MAI-Image-2.5, with +91 Elo gains in text rendering, and show improvements in portraits, 3D imagery, and photorealistic outputs. The models are now available in Public Preview on Microsoft Foundry.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai/:

> MAI-Image-2.6 – ranked second on the Arena text-to-image leaderboard. It's another significant climb for the MAI-Image family, improving +79 Elo over MAI-Image-2.5 overall, with gains across every Arena text-to-image category.

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Record: https://forck.live/items/10751-mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai-microsoft
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