Errors starting and connecting to Codespaces

On 16 March 2026, between 14:16 UTC and 15:18 UTC, Codespaces users encountered a download failure error message when starting newly created or resumed codespaces. At peak, 96% of the created or resumed codespaces were impacted. Active codespaces with a running VSCode environment were not affected. <br /><br />The error was a result of an API deployment issue with our VS Code remote experience dependency and was resolved by rolling back that deployment. We are working with our partners to reduce our incident engagement time, improve early detection before they impact our customers, and ensure safe rollout of similar changes in the future.

Errors starting or resuming Codespaces have resolved.

We are investigating reports of users experiencing errors when starting or connecting to Codespaces. Some users may be unable to access their development environments during this time. We are working to identify the root cause and will implement a fix as soon as possible.

We are investigating reports of impacted performance for some GitHub services.