Azure Foundry sora-2 2025-12-08 retires Oct 15: an 11-day plan

Microsoft's retirement schedule lists sora-2 version 2025-12-08 as Preview with a retirement date of 2026-10-15 and no replacement model. From today, 2026-10-04, that is 11 days. Plan to point your video calls at a model that is still being sold, and test it before the date, because the schedule offers no successor to migrate to.

What the schedule says (read 2026-10-04)

The table copies the two sora-2 rows on the Foundry page, whose own last-updated date is 2026-09-21. Read the page again before you act; schedules change.

OpenAI's own API is already gone

OpenAI's deprecations page says the Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro ids were removed on 2026-09-24, with no recommended replacement. So the Azure deployment is the last place the model name still resolves, and it has 11 days left.

An 11-day plan

Spend the first days on inventory and the last days on a cutover you can reverse.

• Days 1 to 2: list every deployment, job and script that names a Sora deployment, and note the clip length, aspect ratio and whether you rely on audio.
• Days 3 to 4: map each use to a model in GET /v1/videos/models by duration, resolution and audio, not by brand.
• Days 5 to 7: render the same ten prompts on the candidate and compare them side by side.
• Days 8 to 9: switch a small share of traffic behind a flag, keeping the old path for rollback.
• Days 10 to 11: switch fully and remove the Sora code path.

Pointing the same prompt at Sume

Sume's POST /v1/videos uses the OpenRouter video wire, so the request body is a small change. Model ids are bare, for example seedance-2 or wan-3.0. Sume does not carry Sora, so this is a replacement, not a drop-in: expect a different look and re-test your prompts.

curl -X POST "https://api.sume.com/v1/videos" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: sora-move-001" \
  -d '{
    "model": "seedance-2",
    "prompt": "A paper boat crossing a rain puddle, shallow focus",
    "duration": 8,
    "resolution": "720p"
  }'

What Sume does not do

Sume has no Sora model, no Azure deployment type and no Foundry quota. It has a bare-id catalog, an async job envelope with polling_url, and webhook or polling completion. If a compliance rule needs Azure residency, that is a separate decision.