Google began rolling out Skills globally in Gemini chat on September 30, 2026, introducing reusable instructions that can be saved for recurring tasks and invoked by name. The company says availability for Google Workspace business, enterprise, nonprofit and education customers will follow over the coming weeks.
After creating a Skill, users can call it from the prompt bar by typing a forward slash followed by its name. Google suggests using Skills to prepare presentation outlines, talking points and possible Q&A responses, reproduce a preferred writing style, or request three to five distinct perspectives on a subject.
Gemini can also help turn conversations into custom Skills and automatically run one when a prompt matches its intended use. Multiple Skills can operate in the same task, such as combining writing-style instructions with brand guidelines. From September 30, Skills can also include reference files in plain-text, PDF or image formats.
Skills are set to replace Gems. Google says sharing, Google Drive attachments and notebooks from Gemini Notebook will be added to Skills in the coming weeks. Existing Gems are due to migrate automatically when support for the older feature ends.
The retirement will be phased by account type: November 2026 for personal accounts, March 2027 for Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit customers, and June 2027 for Workspace education customers. Opal, Google's experiment for building mini apps, is also scheduled to shut down in November.
At launch, Skills are available across all Google AI subscription tiers for users aged 18 and older, with access for under-18 users promised later. Skills are already present in Gemini Spark. Gems by Google Labs will also be discontinued, but Google says those Gems will not migrate to Skills.
Practical context: In practical terms, Skills turn frequently repeated prompts into named, reusable components and allow longer workflows to be separated into combinable instructions. That could make personal styles and organizational guidance easier to reuse, although results will still depend on the instructions and reference material supplied. Google's announcement does not describe centralized version-control or approval features for organizations.
| Account category | Scheduled end of support |
|---|---|
| Personal accounts | November 2026 |
| Workspace business, enterprise and nonprofit | March 2027 |
| Workspace education | June 2027 |
Automatic migration limitation
Standard Gems will be migrated automatically to Skills when their support ends. Gems by Google Labs will also be discontinued, but Google does not plan to migrate them to Skills.
Sources
Event date: 2026-09-30. Primary source date: 2026-09-30.
