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My Azure for Students account won’t let me deploy resources in any region — what should I do?

20250023 20 Reputation points
2025-10-21T21:10:37.3266667+00:00

Hi everyone,

I’m using an Azure for Students subscription, and I’m unable to deploy any resources in any region. Every time I try, I get the following error:

"This policy maintains a set of best available regions where your subscription can deploy resources. The objective of this policy is to ensure that your subscription has full access to Azure services with optimal performance. Should you need additional or different regions, contact support."

I’ve already tried multiple regions such as Australia East, East US, and Southeast Asia, but all fail with the same error. It seems like my subscription is under a region restriction policy that currently blocks every region.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal using an Azure for Students account.
  2. Try creating any resource (e.g., a virtual machine or storage account).
  3. Select any region during creation.
  4. The deployment fails with the policy error above.

Expected result:

  • I should be able to deploy resources in at least one allowed region.

Actual result:

  • All deployments fail due to a region restriction policy and there is no region in which I have mentioned below which are in my policy.Screenshot 2025-10-22 100523

Screenshot 2025-10-22 100542

Screenshot 2025-10-22 100620

**Details: **

  • Subscription type: Azure for Students
  • Regions in my policy: ["newzealandnorth","chilecentral","indonesiacentral","southeastasia","japanwest"]
  • Regions tried: Australia East, East US, Southeast Asia
  • Error: Region restriction policy prevents deployment in all regions

Could someone from Microsoft Support or the community please help me resolve this

As you can see that I have these regions: ["newzealandnorth","chilecentral","indonesiacentral","southeastasia","japanwest"] which is not in my list during creating a VM, VMSS and any kind of resource.

Azure Policy
Azure Policy
An Azure service that is used to implement corporate governance and standards at scale for Azure resources.
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  1. Jerald Felix 7,520 Reputation points
    2025-10-22T03:09:18.5833333+00:00

    Hello 20250023,

    I've seen this exact issue before with Azure for Students accounts.

    Looking at your details, you're running into what's basically a bug or misconfiguration on Microsoft's end. Your account shows you should have access to regions like New Zealand, Chile, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and Japan - but when you actually try to deploy, every region fails with that "region restriction policy" error.

    Here's what's likely happening: Azure for Students accounts sometimes have their region policies set up incorrectly on the backend. The portal shows you have certain regions available, but the actual deployment service doesn't know about it.

    Things to try (in order):

    1. Clear your browser cache completely - I know it sounds basic, but sometimes the portal gets confused about your permissions
    2. Try a different browser or incognito mode - Rule out any browser-specific weirdness
    3. Wait 24-48 hours and try again - Sometimes these policy updates take time to propagate through all of Azure's systems
    4. Try creating the most basic resource possible - Like a simple storage account or resource group first, then work up to VMs

    If none of that works (which is likely):

    You'll need to contact Azure Support. This is definitely something on their end that needs fixing. When you contact them:

    • Tell them your Azure for Students subscription shows regions in your policy but you can't deploy to ANY region
    • Include the exact error message
    • Mention that your subscription type is "Azure for Students"
    • Reference your subscription ID

    The good news is they usually fix these pretty quickly once they understand it's a policy mismatch issue. The bad news is you might have to wait a few days.

    Alternative while you wait:

    If you really need to get started learning Azure right away, you could try the Azure free account (different from Azure for Students) as a temporary workaround, though the credits are smaller.

    Let me know if the basic troubleshooting steps work, but honestly this looks like a backend issue that only Microsoft can fix.

    Best Regards,

    Jerald Felix

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