As of September 1, 2026, Copilot code review can, in addition to commenting and requesting changes, formally approve a pull request, effectively acting as a human reviewer for GitHub’s branch protection rules.

What changes in the review flow

Previously, Copilot could only leave comments or flag issues, always leaving the final approval to a person. With this update, if the automated review finds no relevant issues, Copilot can now close the review loop formally, unblocking the merge in repositories that require an approval as a mandatory condition.

flowchart LR
    A[Pull Request opened] --> B[Review requested from Copilot]
    B --> C{Copilot analyzes the code}
    C -->|No relevant issues| D[Copilot approves the PR]
    C -->|Issues found| E[Copilot requests changes / comments]
    D --> F[Merge unblocked if branch protection rules are satisfied]
    E --> G[Developer updates the code]
    G --> B

In the same period, GitHub also made new models directly available in Copilot, including GPT-6 Astra (generally available since September 4, 2026) and Gemini 3.8 Flash (since September 3, 2026), expanding the model options usable in chat and agent sessions.