Salesforce core disruption, September 16, 2026

On Wednesday, September 16, 2026, Salesforce reported a Disruption on core services. The incident is resolved. Salesforce lists major impact from 3:50 a.m. ET (07:50 UTC) to 11:26 a.m. ET (15:26 UTC), about 7 hours 36 minutes. Trust posted Resolved at 2:59 p.m. ET (18:59 UTC). Salesforce wrote that a targeted mitigation restored service across affected Hyperforce environments and that telemetry remained healthy during extended validation.

Times below are Eastern (UTC-4). This is a closed recap, last updated ~3:05 p.m. ET.

Salesforce Trust status

Salesforce Trust lists this core-service disruption as Resolved [1][2]. Salesforce lists the major service-disruption window from 3:50 a.m. ET to 11:26 a.m. ET (07:50–15:26 UTC), about 7 hours 36 minutes.

• 3:50 a.m. ET (07:50 UTC) — Major service disruption start. End time 11:26 a.m. ET (15:26 UTC) [2].
• 4:45 a.m. ET (08:45 UTC) — Update. "We're investigating an issue impacting multiple instances across all regions where customers may experience severe delays, intermittent errors, or an inability to access some services. Some customers are also unable to submit new support cases through the Help portal. We're investigating the issue." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 5:10 a.m. ET (09:10 UTC) — Update. "Investigations indicate that requests are stalling while waiting on a response from an internal login service, which is using up available server resources. Customers continue to experience severe delays, intermittent errors, and inability to access some services. This also affects support case creation." Salesforce said it had attempted a rolling restart on one of the impacted instances [1][2].
• 5:57 a.m. ET (09:57 UTC) — Update. "We believe that the issue is caused by an external dependency failure that's impacting the legacy login server. We're blocking the Application Programming Interface (API) endpoint as a potential mitigation step. We also engaged our third-party infrastructure provider to determine if there are any issues and they've confirmed that there are no issues with third-party infrastructure." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 6:01 a.m. ET (10:01 UTC) — Update. "We're no longer pursuing restarts as a path to remediation. Customers continue to experience severe delays, intermittent errors, and inability to access some services and support case creation." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 6:18 a.m. ET (10:18 UTC) — Update. "One of our core system components experienced increased load, which limited its capacity to process requests. We're working on a fix to resolve this issue and restore services." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 6:31 a.m. ET (10:31 UTC) — Update. "We're pursuing the fastest path to restore services. We're testing our fix on a test instance. Once the test is validated, we'll roll out the fix fleetwide." Salesforce also said customers continue to experience severe delays, intermittent errors, and inability to access some services and support case creation [1][2].
• 6:56 a.m. ET (10:56 UTC) — Update. "We've validated the fix successfully on the test instance. We'll now roll out the fix fleetwide to all impacted instances." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 7:19 a.m. ET (11:19 UTC) — Update. "A fleetwide rollout is in progress and customers are starting to see their service return to normal. In parallel, we're working on a code-level permanent fix." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 7:41 a.m. ET (11:41 UTC) — Update. "The rollout is progressing region by region and we're seeing improvement. We don't have a confirmed time of completion. GovCloud customers have been confirmed to be out of impact." Salesforce said customers may continue to experience severe delays, intermittent errors, and inability to access some services and support case creation [1][2].
• 8:13 a.m. ET (12:13 UTC) — Update. "The rollout is progressing region-wise and services are returning to normal in regions that are completed. We're monitoring the rollout as it continues, and we're working on a permanent fix." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 8:39 a.m. ET (12:39 UTC) — Update. "As the rollout is progressing region-wise, most instances are recovering. Some customers may still see errors accessing the service until we finish a manual restart on their instance. We don't have a confirmed resolution time." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 9:13 a.m. ET (13:13 UTC) — Update. "We've determined that the rollout didn't fully complete for a number of instances, so some customers may still be experiencing the original issue. We're reapplying the fix now. Some customers may need to clear cached data or restart their session for full recovery." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 10:00 a.m. ET (14:00 UTC) — Update. "We've completed the next phase of the rollout. We're manually restarting instances where the automated fix didn't fully resolve the issue. We've received reports of scheduled jobs not running as expected for some customers who are now able to access the service. We're investigating this." Salesforce also said the impact radius is narrower than initially understood and that it would remove instances that have not experienced an impact from further incident communications [1][2].
• 10:27 a.m. ET (14:27 UTC) — Update. "We've completed the next phase of the rollout to the remaining impacted instances. We continue to manually restart instances where the automated fix didn't fully resolve the issue." Salesforce said affected customers may continue to experience severe delays, intermittent errors, and inability to access some services and support case creation [1][2].
• 10:56 a.m. ET (14:56 UTC) — Update. "We're seeing signs of recovery and many customers are coming out of impact. We continue to manually restart instances where the automated fix didn't fully resolve the issue. We don't have a confirmed resolution time." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 11:39 a.m. ET (15:39 UTC) — Update. "We've narrowed the remaining impact to a subset of Hyperforce instances. First-party environments were not impacted. The mitigation is now in place across nearly all affected instances, and we're completing targeted restarts and manual recovery actions on the remaining affected instances." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 11:56 a.m. ET (15:56 UTC) — Update. "Investigations have highlighted that the impact radius is narrower than initially understood. We will now remove any instances that have not experienced an impact, and these will no longer receive communications about this incident going forward. Impacted instances will continue to be updated." [1][2].
• 12:23 p.m. ET (16:23 UTC) — Update. "We've completed applying the mitigation across the affected Hyperforce environments and are conducting fleetwide validation to confirm service recovery. Most customer-facing impact has cleared, while we work through a small number of remaining instances that require additional verification or targeted recovery actions." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 1:00 p.m. ET (17:00 UTC) — Update. "Our telemetry is no longer showing active performance or availability impact across customer-facing Hyperforce environments. We're validating recent customer reports against service health data and confirming the recovery time before declaring the issue resolved." Salesforce said it would provide an update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 1:29 p.m. ET (17:29 UTC) — Update. "Service telemetry has remained healthy across customer-facing Hyperforce environments since 15:26 UTC. Our review of recent customer reports has not identified any confirmed ongoing impact related to this incident. The mitigation remains active, and we're applying additional preventive protections to related service paths while completing final validation." Salesforce said it would provide another update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 2:06 p.m. ET (18:06 UTC) — Update. "We continue to observe healthy service telemetry across customer-facing Hyperforce environments, and our review of recent customer reports has not confirmed ongoing impact related to this incident. We're completing validation of one isolated report before declaring the issue resolved. The mitigation remains active, and we're adding preventive protections to related service paths to reduce the risk of recurrence." Salesforce said it would provide another update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 2:46 p.m. ET (18:46 UTC) — Update. "Service telemetry remains healthy, and our review has not confirmed any ongoing customer impact related to this incident. Before declaring the issue resolved, we're ensuring the existing mitigation remains active across all affected customer-facing Hyperforce environments. We're applying targeted updates where the automated process did not complete, helping maintain service stability and reduce the risk of impact returning." Salesforce said it would provide another update in 30 minutes or sooner [1][2].
• 2:59 p.m. ET (18:59 UTC) — Update. "The issue causing severe delays, intermittent errors, and difficulty accessing some Salesforce services or creating support cases across affected Hyperforce environments was resolved as of 15:26 UTC. A targeted mitigation restored service, and telemetry has remained healthy during extended validation. We apologize for how this incident affected you and your business. We will undertake a full investigation of the incident, establishing the technical trigger, the underlying cause, and preventive action to avoid a repeat in the future." [1][2].
• 2:59 p.m. ET (18:59 UTC) — Resolved. "The Salesforce Technology team has observed that instance stability and performance are now at expected levels and declared the incident resolved. We will thoroughly investigate the incident, establishing the technical trigger, the underlying cause, and preventive action to avoid a repeat in the future." [1][2].

During the incident, Trust listed a peak of 1035 instances as MAJOR_INCIDENT_CORE this morning, later 912 after Salesforce said it would remove non-impacted instances from communications (North America 501, EMEA 244, APAC 167 at that 912 count). As of ~3:05 p.m. ET, the status preview lists 0 instances as MAJOR_INCIDENT_CORE [2].

Salesforce has not published a root-cause analysis. Morning investigation language included an internal login stall, an external dependency on a legacy login server, and increased load on a core component. Those remain investigation updates, not a closed RCA. Salesforce's Resolved posts say a targeted mitigation restored service and that it will investigate the technical trigger, underlying cause, and preventive action.

Impact

During the disruption, Salesforce listed severe delays, intermittent errors, inability to access some CRM services, and Help portal support-case creation as affected. At 9:13 a.m. ET, Salesforce said some customers may need to clear cached data or restart their session for full recovery. Salesforce later received reports of scheduled jobs not running as expected for some customers who were again able to access the service.

Salesforce narrowed remaining impact to a subset of Hyperforce instances, said first-party environments were not impacted, and confirmed GovCloud customers were out of impact. Trust also said it would remove non-impacted instances from further incident communications, which matches the drop from 1035 to 912 MAJOR_INCIDENT_CORE listings before resolve. DownDetector's homepage listed Salesforce as experiencing problems around 6:07 a.m. ET; that is a secondary crowd signal. Salesforce Trust remains the primary source [1][4].

StatusStack tracked this incident at statusstack.com/service/salesforce (HTTP 200 at last check; page title: Is Salesforce Down?) [3].

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References

[1] Salesforce. (2026, September 16). Trust Status. Retrieved ~3:05 p.m. ET from https://status.salesforce.com/

[2] Salesforce. (2026, September 16). Trust Status API and instance status preview. Retrieved ~3:05 p.m. ET from https://status.salesforce.com/ and https://api.status.salesforce.com/v1/instances/status/preview

[3] StatusStack. (2026, September 16). Is Salesforce Down? Retrieved ~3:05 p.m. ET from https://statusstack.com/service/salesforce

[4] DownDetector. (2026, September 16). DownDetector. Retrieved ~6:07 a.m. ET from https://downdetector.com/