GitHub Student Developer Pack Approved, but Copilot sign-ups are "temporarily paused"

[aisoerjana]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Benefit Activation/Waiting

Hi everyone,

Hi everyone,

I recently got approved for the GitHub Student Developer Pack through GitHub Education. My application was successfully verified, and I can see that my student benefits are active on the Education page.

However, I'm unable to use the GitHub Copilot benefit. In both GitHub.com and my IDE (VS Code), Copilot still shows up as the Free plan.

I noticed there is a yellow warning banner on my Education Benefits page stating:
"New Copilot plan sign-ups are temporarily paused as we ensure a high-quality experience."

Just to be sure, I have already tried the standard troubleshooting steps:

• Logged out and logged back into GitHub and my IDE.
• Reinstalled the GitHub Copilot extension.
• Verified that my GitHub Education status is actively showing as verified.
• Waited for some time after approval in case the benefits needed to sync.

Has anyone else experienced this specific "paused" issue recently after being approved for the Student Pack?

Does anyone know typically how long these sign-up pauses last, or if there is any additional step required to claim Copilot Pro for students once the pause is lifted?

Any help, guidance, or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[abhishekChauhanx]

Hello ,

This is a known, platform-wide issue — not something wrong with your account.
On April 20, 2026, GitHub announced it would temporarily suspend new sign-ups for GitHub Copilot Pro, Copilot Pro+, and the Copilot Student plan. The free Copilot Free plan remains available, and existing users can still upgrade between plans. Roboin
GitHub's VP of product development explained that "agentic workflows have fundamentally changed Copilot's compute demands," and the pause is designed to maintain a reliable and predictable experience for current customers. The New Stack
So the banner you're seeing — "New Copilot plan sign-ups are temporarily paused" — is intentional and affects all newly approved students globally right now.
What you can do:

If you are a verified student and your Copilot Pro trial was cancelled due to this, you can try visiting https://github.com/github-copilot/free_signup to attempt enabling Copilot Student access. GitHub
Wait — there is no manual workaround. GitHub has stated that pausing sign-ups allows them to serve existing customers more effectively, but no official reopening date has been given. GitHub
As a fallback, Copilot Free is still fully functional in VS Code while you wait for the pause to lift.

Your Student Developer Pack benefits (Codespaces hours, partner offers, etc.) are still active — only the Copilot Student plan activation is blocked for now. No troubleshooting step on your end will resolve this; it's a server-side restriction.

[Ransomwave]

This is so frustrating because I was an existing user on Copilot Student but I got removed and had to reapply.

They've been worsening the service to the point of literally not letting me use it anymore! At this point, might as well just pay for a competitor instead.