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.

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.

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

A new Microsoft MVP award cycle, a new moment to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. July 1st is normally the day of the award cycle, but this year got delayed for a few days due to unknown circumstances. Because people get awarded every month, the comparison to July of every year should give an idea of the yearly trend.

Few points of attention:

• Apparently, during the award cycle MVP’s located in Russia or Belarus were removed, including MVP’s that were awarded in the first half of 2022 and thus not up for renewal.
• 19 anonymous MVP awardees do not disclose location. Those are not represented in below numbers.
• The Office Development category was rebranded M365 Development.
• The Office Apps & Services category was rebranded M365 Apps & Services.

Awardees per Category

The following table contains the awardees per award category from July of 2019 up to 2022, plus change percentage. It therefor does not reflect on changes during the year (people newly awarded or moving to Microsoft). I will leave the interpretation up to you.

Note: The difference between total number of awards and total number of MVP’s is caused by MVP’s awarded in multiple categories. A total of 124 MVP’s were awarded in two or more categories.

M365 Apps & Services per Country

When zooming in on the M365 Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including the % change compared to last year. As you might notice, there are quiet a number of countries without MVP’s compared to last year.

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

A new Microsoft MVP award cycle, a new moment to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. While July 1st is the first day of the new award cycle, it usually is recommended to wait few days for the site and data behind it to get updated. and new and renewed awardees turning in their Non-Disclosure Agreement before showing up on the site. Because people get awarded every month, the comparison to July of every year should give an idea of the yearly trend.

Disclaimer: A percentage of MVP awardees are anonymous, and do not disclose information regarding expertise or location. There are currently 133 anonymous MVPs, and they are not taken into account in below statistics.

The following table contains the awardees per award category from July of 2019, 2020 and 2021, and change percentage compared to the year before. I will leave the interpretation up to you.

Note: The total number of MVPs doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as MVPs can be awarded in more than one category. A total of 77 MVPs are awarded in two or more categories.

When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including the % change compared to last year. As you might notice, there are quiet a number of new countries being represented: Ghana, Greece, Peru, Senegal and Vietnam. This supports the current Diversity & Inclusion mindset, and in my opinion is a good thing.

And finally, the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years.

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

With great honor and joy I can announce that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award for the seventh consecutive year, again in the category Office Apps & Services. Congratulations to other new and re-awarded MVPs as well, and kudos to the MVP program in undertaking the monstrous task of reviewing and evaluating thousands of contributions every award cycle.

With another award cycle also comes the time to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. July 3rd is chosen as the first days the site gets updated and new awardees need to turn in their NDA before they show up on the site.

Because people can get awarded each month, the comparison to July 3rd of every year indicates only yearly trend. Therefor we’ll also compare the numbers to those of June to see the impact on long-term MVP population, as awardees from January are only up for consideration in July 2021 for example.

From the numbers, it is clear that this cycle the number of MVPs went a bit down from 2.998 in June 2020 to 2.850 now (-5%), but it is higher than the 2.634 (+8%) of July 2019.

The following table contains the changes per award category from July 2019 and June 2020 to July 2020. I will leave the interpretation up to you.

Note: The total number of MVPs doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as MVPs can be awarded in more than one category; there are now 82 people awarded in multiple categories’; an increase of 57% compared to June 2019.

When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including change compared to last year. Be advised that 26 OAS MVPs are anonymous or have profiles without information on residency.

And last, the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years, before and after the award cycle.

On a final note, the above data is static; some MVPs have build great dashboards which allow you to work with the data more interactively (if they have updated their data set, that is). Some noteworthy mentions:

• MVP Monitor, by Andrew Koltyakov
• Microsoft MVP Power BI Report, by Reza Rad

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

Update: Updated statistics based on award categories (not people) due to the number of multi-category awardees.

In previous years, I performed some comparisons on the MVP population after every award cycle. So, time to get some fresh statistics after July 2019 award cycle.

For comparison, I had a look at the public MVP statistics of July 3rd, 2018 against those of July 3rd, 2019, as the public MVP site was closed the first two days. From the numbers, it is clear that this cycle the number of MVPs went down again, from 3.030 last year, to 2.634 now (-13%).

The following table contains the changes per award category from July 2018 to
July 2019:

Few notes:

• The total number of MVP’s doesn’t equal the total number of awards, as people can be awarded in more than one category; there are 52 MVP’s with multiple award categories (one even in 3 categories).
• Former single product categories, such as Access or OneNote, were moved under the Office Apps & Services category (which was rebranded from Office Servers & Services). Those numbers are merged for the 2018 column.
• When comparing to earlier years, the award categories were restructured in 2017, e.g. Visual Studio and Development Technologies became Developer Technologies.

When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below. Be advised that 26 are anonymous MVP’s or have profiles without location.

The countries Argentina, Chile, Latvia, Peru, Romania and Greece are no longer represented in the Office Apps & Services category, while Costa Rica, Israel, Taiwan and El Salvador are new to the table.

Above are the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years. Do note that for March and July 2019 the former product categories are included in the Office Apps & Services category, hence why I included March to have a sense of the changes in the July cycle.

If you have questions or comments, please send them in the comments below.

Updated July 3rd:  Includes newly registered awardees and awardees who changed category. Added overview of Office Servers and Services numbers over last couple of years.

With the latest annual award cycle, one might be curious which impact it had on the MVP population. I performed a similar exercise last year to compare the impact of the start of the new award cycle. This year, all the MVP’s previously on the January and October cycles were also included in the reviews, making this year the first one where MVP leads and others had to perform the dauntless task of reviewing community contributions of over 3,500 people.

For comparison, I had a look at the public MVP statistics of July 1st against those of June 26th, to exclude significant noise from the monthly awardees. To start, let us first have a look at the total population of MVP’s. From the numbers, it is clear some type of correction took place, as the total number of MVP’s went down from 3,815 last month to 3,025 now (-21%).

As big changes might be a result of change of focus, the following table contains the changes per award category from June 2018 to July 2018. Note that the total number of MVP’s doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as people can be awarded in more than one category; there are 50 MVP’s with multiple award categories.

Except for the AI MVP’s, all the numbers are down. Way down. Word is quite a number of long-standing MVP’s have not been re-awarded this cycle. One could only guess for the motivation (only Microsoft knows), but it could be due to the ongoing shift from on-premises technology to cloud-based technology.

When zooming in on the Office Servers and Services MVP’s category, the awards per country is shown in the following heath map and table. Be advised that MVP’s that are anonymous or have profiles without location (~23 for Office Servers and Services), are not taken into account since their location is unknown.

Unfortunately, I have no data on the other categories from before june 2017.

If you have questions or comments, please discuss in the comments.

With great joy and honor I can announce that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award in the category Office Servers and Services (localized e-mail):

MVP awards are given to individuals by Microsoft in recognition of their contributions to the community, such as:

• Writing blogs, articles, books.
• Speaking engagements or podcasts.
• Supporting others, e.g. forum or TechCommunity contributions.
• Code contributions.
• Product feedback.

This is my 5th consecutive year as an MVP. I used to be an “October MVP”, which meant my award was up in October every year. After the award cycle changed to a yearly one for everyone, this year was the first time all MVP’s who fell under the old quarterly cycles, were being up for renewal. It also meant, contributions of a longer period of time were being evaluated. So lots of kudos to the MVP leads and other folks that had to go through the monstrous task of reviewing thousands of contributions for this cycle.

Many thanks to the community, readers, followers, fellow MVP’s and friends, peers, product groups and other Microsoft employees for their encouragement, inspiration and support over all those years.

My MVP profile can be found here.

Mid-2017, I  had a look at the publicly available statistics on MVP’s around the world after Microsoft changed their MVP award renewal regime. This was to check if there was any impact noticeable. With the regime change, also came a change that MVP’s can be awarded on a monthly basis. This means people can be awarded every month; maybe not in every category, but overall yes.

For the start of 2018, let’s first have a look at the total population of MVP’s. The total number of MVP’s went down from 3410 in July last year, to 3695 now (-15%). The table below contains the number of awards per category, and the change from July 2017 to January 2018:

Note: The total number of MVP’s doesn’t equal the total number of competences, as people can be awarded in more than one category.

In July 2017 the new annual award cycle regime was put into effect for Microsoft MVP’s around the world. Earlier this year, to simplify the process and introduce new talent in the program more quickly, Microsoft switched to a monthly cycle for recognizing MVP’s, and changed the award review from a quarterly to an annual cycle. This meant MVP’s from April and July were going to be the first ones the be reviewed for June 2017; the January and October awardees got their review shifted to July 2018. That might look like dispensation, but it isn’t as their contributions will be evaluated over a longer period of time.

Looking at the publicly available statistics on MVP’s around the world could provide some insight in what the program – and thus Microsoft – has set their sights on. So with the introduction of the new cycle, I did a quick comparison of this and last month’s numbers. But first a small disclaimer: below numbers are taken from a public source, the Microsoft Valuable Professional portal. Also, there are a small number of anonymous MVP’s, which always puzzles me as being an MVP usually means that this person is visible online. And finally, note that MVP’s can be awarded in more than one category, which is the reason some numbers won’t add up.

To start with the total number of MVP’s, that went down from 4017 in June to 3410 (-15%). It also saw a new category being added to the program: Artificial Intelligence, or AI. The table below contains the number of awards per category, and the change from June to July:

Overall, the numbers are down except for the new AI category and the number of Outlook and PowerPoint MVP’s.

Regarding the Office Servers and Services MVP’s, the number of awards per country is depicted in the following heath map and table. Note that anonymous MVP’s are not taken into account:

Looking at the names that were not on the MVP portal per July, one may notice there are quite a number of long-standing MVP’s that were not re-awarded. Apart from being a big loss for the community, it is also an indication Microsoft is further looking ahead to the Cloud First, Mobile First, On First™ world, indiscriminately coming clean with the MVP population in the process.

For those that were not re-awarded, thank you for all your past contribution, some for being an inspiration long before I became one, your honest feedback to the program and other MVP’s. Don’t forget: Once an MVP, always an MVP!

It’s been a while since I made an overview of the number of Exchange MVPs around the world. With the recent reorganization of the MVP program, lots of product-related MVP awards were merged in container titles. For example, the former Exchange or Lync Server MVPs are now part of the Office Servers and Services MVP, making it nearly impossible to differentiate per expertise unless classifying individual MVPs.

The graphic displays distribution of Office Servers and Services MVPs over the world, per October 2016. The information is collected from the public MVP site, and while some MVPs remain anonymous (curious, as awardees are in principle active community members), it’s clear some regions are still under-represented.

Below are the numbers used to create the above map.