If you're catching up on Data + AI Summit 2026, here’s a simple Unity Catalog recap for data governance. Three themes stand out: Control, Context, and Choice.

Control:
Keep governance consistent as AI moves from access to action.

AI governance at Data + AI Summit 2026: What’s new with Unity AI Gateway: A recap of the main AI governance announcements from DAIS 2026, including runtime controls, tracing, and budget management for AI systems.

Unity AI Gateway: This product page explains how Unity AI Gateway governs models, agents, tools, and MCP interactions in one place.

ABAC policies (GA):This update covers fine-grained governance features in Unity Catalog for protecting sensitive data at scale.

Context:
Give people and agents a shared understanding of business meaning.

Unity Catalog Semantics: This page shows how Unity Catalog Semantics brings together metrics, glossary concepts, and domains to provide trusted business context.

Metric views: This docs page explains how metric views define business metrics once and let teams query them consistently across SQL, dashboards, Genie Spaces, alerts, and BI tools.

External lineage (GA): This docs page shows how Unity Catalog can extend lineage beyond Databricks to external systems so teams can see end-to-end data flow.

Table insights and popularity: This docs page explains how Catalog Explorer surfaces usage trends, frequent activity, and table or column popularity to help teams understand how data is being used.

Choice:
Stay open across formats, engines, and sharing models as your governance needs grow.

Apache Iceberg updates on Databricks: Iceberg v3 GA, Open Sharing, and Unified Governance. This blog highlights Iceberg-related updates focused on interoperability, open formats, and governance across engines.

Introducing OpenSharing SecureConnect: This post explains how SecureConnect supports secure cross-cloud sharing with less operational overhead.

Deep dive
Explore the Governance and Security sessions from Data + AI Summit 2026 in one place.

Data + AI Summit 2026 Governance and Security track

Get started with Unity Catalog
Explore the docs to set up and govern data and AI across your Databricks environments.

Unity Catalog docs for AWS | Azure | GCP