AVD Hybrid Extends AVD Outside Azure, with Limits

• AVD Hybrid lets AVD manage access to on-premises desktops hosted on any VM or headless server running Windows.
• It supports Windows Server and Windows 11 VMs in most third-party clouds, or on-premises within any hypervisor.
• It could help ease migrations to AVD, assist with compliance and security scenarios, and enable remote access to on-premises resources.
• However, AVD Hybrid has some licensing restrictions and significant feature limitations compared with AVD in Azure or AVD on Azure Local.

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Hybrid is a new deployment option for AVD that became generally available in Sept. 2026. It allows the hosted AVD service to manage access to Windows session hosts on-premises or in third-party clouds, running on any VM hypervisor or physical server. This functionality can let organizations add on-premises hosts to their AVD deployment without investing in costly Azure Local hardware, making it easier to keep certain workloads on-premises for compliance, for access to local resources, or as part of a gradual migration to AVD. However, AVD Hybrid lacks hosted AVD’s session host management and provisioning features and doesn’t offer Windows client multi-session, requiring local customer tooling, limiting its usefulness, and increasing some Per-User costs for end-user virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).