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

- Company: Microsoft AI (microsoft.ai)
- Announced: 2026-08-10
- Category: new-model
- 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/8417-mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai
- 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, now available in Public Preview on Microsoft Foundry. The model is ranked second on the Arena text-to-image leaderboard, improving +79 Elo over MAI-Image-2.5 with gains across all categories.

## 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 and MAI-Image-2.6-Flash are now available in Public Preview on Microsoft Foundry.

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