---
title: "GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage"
description: "GitHub’s August 17, 2026 availability incident: load-balancer saturation, retry amplification and recovery."
incident_type: "Cybersecurity incident"
status: "closed"
last_modified: "2026-10-07"
canonical_url: "https://www.ally.security/incidents/github-outage-2026"
markdown_url: "https://www.ally.security/incidents/github-outage-2026.md"
stix_url: "https://www.ally.security/incidents/github-outage-2026/stix.json"
---

# GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage

GitHub reported an availability failure involving load balancers and retries. The provider’s account does not establish a data breach.

Last modified Oct 7, 2026 · 1 source

## Summary

- **Environment:** GitHub.com service infrastructure
- **Operational impact:** Errors and latency across multiple services
- **Financial impact:** No quantified financial impact in the incident report

## What happened

[GitHub](https://github.com/) reported an availability incident on August 17, 2026, spanning 13:28–21:15 UTC. Its [incident report](https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/zkxwbgr0cnmx) describes infrastructure saturation and recovery. [1](#source-1)

## Impact

- Errors and latency affected Issues, pull requests, APIs, Actions and Copilot. [1](#source-1)
- This record does not establish unauthorized access or data exposure.

## Timeline

### August 17, 2026 — Service disruption and recovery

The [provider-reported interval](https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/zkxwbgr0cnmx) ran from 13:28 to 21:15 UTC; it does not mean every service was unavailable throughout. [1](#source-1)

### October 7, 2026 — Briefing updated

This briefing was last reviewed and updated on October 7, 2026.

## Threat Group & Attack Vector

GitHub attributed the failure to Central US load-balancer saturation, a sidecar autoscaling misconfiguration and exhausted HAProxy flow limits. Retry amplification delayed Copilot authentication recovery. [1](#source-1)

### Actors

- No actor is attributed to this operational failure in the canonical record.

### TTPs

- No MITRE ATT\&CK technique is mapped to this availability event.

## Response

GitHub rerouted traffic, paused affected HAProxy nodes and reduced retries to restore service. [1](#source-1)

## Assets

[Download the case-scoped STIX 2.1 bundle](<https://www.ally.security/incidents/github-outage-2026/stix.json>)

## Sources

Primary source records used to research this incident.

<a id="source-1"></a>

### Incident with GitHub.com

official · GitHub · Aug 17, 2026

<https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/zkxwbgr0cnmx>

<details>
<summary>Evidence ledger</summary>

Review the supporting structured claims.

1. **Ended At · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: 2026-08-17T21:15:00Z
2. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: Retry amplification delayed Copilot authentication recovery.
3. **Began At · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: 2026-08-17T13:28:00Z
4. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: GitHub reported elevated errors and latency affecting Issues, pull requests, APIs, Actions and Copilot.
5. **Affected Organization · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: GitHub
6. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: GitHub rerouted traffic, paused affected HAProxy nodes and reduced retries to restore service.
7. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current**  
   GitHub August 2026 load-balancer outage: GitHub attributed the outage to Central US load-balancer saturation, a sidecar autoscaling misconfiguration and exhausted HAProxy flow limits.

</details>