Another year, another Microsoft MVP award cycle. Happy and proud to report that yours truly received his 10th MVP Award. Thank you!
This is also a moment to have a quick peek at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP portal. Normally, notifications are sent out on July 1st, but this year we had a small delay. In anticipation of awardees also needing some time to accept their Non-Disclosure Agreement terms, these numbers are taken from July 18th. Comparing them to July of recent years should give an idea of the yearly trend, as people can get awarded every month. The yearly award cycle in July will logically see a drop.
Few points of attention:
- Out of the 3.175 MVP’s published on the MVP portal, 142 do not disclose location, so those are not represented in below numbers.
- New categories Security, Mixed Reality and Internet of Things were added.
- New categories might result in MVP’s switching when those are a better indication of their community work.
- Overall, more countries are now represented in the program compared to last year.
- Numbers do not reflect changes throughout the year. The drop from just before the award cycle, which showed 3.440 MVP’s, is not visible.
MVP Awardees per Category
The following table contains the awardees per award category from July of 2019 up to 2023, plus change percentage.
| Expertise | Jul2019 | Jul2020 | % | Jul2021 | % | Jul2022 | % | Jul2023 | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI | 84 | 122 | 45% | 138 | 13% | 128 | -7% | 105 | -18% |
| Business Applications | 166 | 240 | 45% | 323 | 35% | 351 | 9% | 442 | 26% |
| Cloud and Datacenter Management | 232 | 209 | -10% | 219 | 5% | 164 | -25% | 136 | -17% |
| Data Platform | 332 | 358 | 8% | 392 | 9% | 364 | -7% | 335 | -8% |
| Developer Technologies | 644 | 697 | 8% | 770 | 10% | 715 | -7% | 747 | 4% |
| Enterprise Mobility | 106 | 113 | 7% | 133 | 18% | 149 | 12% | 100 | -33% |
| Internet of Things | 0 | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 43 | 0% |
| M365 Apps & Services | 491 | 512 | 4% | 556 | 9% | 492 | -12% | 541 | 10% |
| M365 Development | 47 | 64 | 36% | 69 | 8% | 59 | -14% | 70 | 19% |
| Microsoft Azure | 409 | 463 | 13% | 534 | 15% | 546 | 2% | 526 | -4% |
| Mixed Reality | 0 | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 45 | 0% |
| Security | 0 | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 171 | 0% |
| Windows and Devices for IT | 57 | 43 | -25% | 42 | -2% | 45 | 7% | 61 | 36% |
| Windows Development | 119 | 110 | -8% | 120 | 9% | 92 | -23% | 37 | -60% |
| Award Count | 2687 | 2931 | 9% | 3296 | 12% | 3105 | -6% | 3359 | 8% |
| MVP Count | 2634 | 2849 | 8% | 3223 | 13% | 3023 | -6% | 3175 | 5% |
Note: The difference between total number of awards and total number of MVP’s is because an MVP can be awarded in more than one category.
MVP Awardees per Country
The following table contains the awardees per country, plus change percentage compared to July last year.
| Country | No.(change) | Country | No.(change) | Country | No.(change) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albania | 1 (0%) | Honduras | 1 (100%) | Paraguay | 1 (0%) |
| Argentina | 13 (-14%) | Hong Kong | 6 (100%) | Peru | 13 (0%) |
| Armenia | 0 (-100%) | Hungary | 9 (0%) | Philippines | 7 (-13%) |
| Australia | 109 (-2%) | Iceland | 4 (-20%) | Poland | 60 (13%) |
| Austria | 33 (13%) | India | 81 (0%) | Portugal | 21 (16%) |
| Azerbaijan | 2 (100%) | Indonesia | 8 (0%) | Puerto Rico | 1 (0%) |
| Bahrain | 1 (0%) | Ireland | 34 (9%) | Romania | 19 (11%) |
| Bangladesh | 4 (-34%) | Israel | 14 (7%) | Saudi Arabia | 5 (0%) |
| Belgium | 59 (7%) | Italy | 66 (4%) | Senegal | 1 (0%) |
| Bolivia | 3 (0%) | Ivory Coast | 1 (0%) | Serbia | 5 (66%) |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 7 (16%) | Japan | 165 (0%) | Singapore | 14 (0%) |
| Brazil | 123 (-9%) | Kazakhstan | 1 (0%) | Slovakia | 2 (0%) |
| Bulgaria | 10 (0%) | Kenya | 3 (300%) | Slovenia | 6 (-25%) |
| Cambodia | 1 (0%) | Korea | 65 (10%) | South Africa | 11 (-27%) |
| Canada | 121 (-5%) | Latvia | 3 (-25%) | Spain | 89 (14%) |
| Chile | 4 (-20%) | Lithuania | 2 (0%) | Sri Lanka | 9 (-31%) |
| China | 131 (24%) | Luxembourg | 1 (0%) | Sweden | 76 (0%) |
| Colombia | 14 (0%) | Macedonia | 5 (0%) | Switzerland | 50 (25%) |
| Costa Rica | 2 (-34%) | Malaysia | 6 (-25%) | Taiwan | 46 (12%) |
| Croatia | 15 (-7%) | Malta | 0 (-100%) | Thailand | 11 (10%) |
| Czech Republic | 30 (-4%) | Mauritius | 0 (-100%) | Netherlands | 167 (12%) |
| Denmark | 45 (18%) | Mexico | 17 (-11%) | Togo | 1 (100%) |
| Dom. Republic | 6 (-15%) | Morocco | 2 (-50%) | Tunisia | 1 (-50%) |
| Ecuador | 4 (100%) | Myanmar | 2 (-34%) | Turkey | 21 (10%) |
| Egypt | 4 (0%) | Nepal | 4 (-20%) | Ukraine | 9 (-25%) |
| El Salvador | 2 (0%) | New Zealand | 40 (0%) | UAE | 2 (-60%) |
| Estonia | 1 (-50%) | Nicaragua | 1 (100%) | UK | 258 (8%) |
| Finland | 31 (10%) | Nigeria | 18 (50%) | USA | 472 (1%) |
| France | 119 (8%) | Norway | 44 (12%) | Uruguay | 1 (0%) |
| Germany | 129 (4%) | Pakistan | 5 (-17%) | Uzbekistan | 2 (200%) |
| Ghana | 7 (0%) | Palestine | 1 (0%) | Venezuela | 1 (100%) |
| Greece | 5 (25%) | Panama | 1 (0%) | Vietnam | 5 (0%) |
| Guatemala | 1 (-50%) |
If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.
EighTwOne (821) 
1. It’s funny to me to see that there’s still an IoT category given that there are no MVPs in it.
2. Isn’t it interesting that the number of “AI” MVPs has dropped given the large investment that MS has made in AI-related technologies?
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1) New category, last column: 43 per July.
2) It is. Let’s see what the Copilot wave will do for them.
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