Jul 2, 2026: VARIANT data type on Delta Direct tables (General availability)¶

With this release, Snowflake supports the VARIANT data type on Iceberg tables created from Delta table files in object storage (Delta Direct).

When your Delta tables include variant columns, Snowflake maps them to the Snowflake VARIANT data type. You can query semi-structured data using VARIANT functions and dot or bracket notation. Delta Direct tables are read-only in Snowflake.

For supported type mappings, see Delta data types.