What is new in Home Assistant 2026.10?
The headline change is the map. Home Assistant has moved from pre-rendered tiles to OpenStreetMap vector rendering, so streets and labels stay sharp at every zoom level, with a dedicated dark mode. Markers show profile photos for people and zone icons in coloured bubbles, and a new Map dashboard overview lists People, Devices and Zones.
The profile page is reorganised into Appearance, Localization, This browser/app and Security. Users can now change their own profile picture and name without an administrator.
For automation builders, the "Triggered by" condition lets you pick triggers visually: they are numbered, IDs are generated for you, and existing manual YAML IDs keep working. Dashboard visibility conditions now accept the automation condition set (Template, Sun, Zone, Device) next to the Screen and User conditions. Our conditional visibility guide covers the existing approach.
The new AI settings page turns on the Model Context Protocol server in one click and gives you a copyable URL for tools such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor. For AI help inside your own automations, see our AI automation suggester guide.
Which new integrations arrived in 2026.10?
There are 15 new integrations: Axle Energy, Bitvis Power Hub, Gree Infrared, INDI Allsky, KACO Modbus, my-PV, OSRAM Infrared, Persang Infrared, SolarEdge Modbus, Sunsynk, Theben Conexa Smart Meter Gateway, Threema, Vitesy, Willow and Zonneplan. Energy and solar dominate: SolarEdge Modbus launched at platinum quality, the top tier of the quality scale, and Sunsynk, KACO Modbus and my-PV also target power kit. If you run solar, read our solar monitoring guide first.
Existing integrations improved too: Matter gains leak sensor controls, Tuya supports DIN rail meters, circuit breakers, EV chargers and water valves, ESPHome devices can open connections to Home Assistant themselves, Reolink gets pan and tilt control, Philips Hue gets MotionAware zone switches, LIFX gains Thread connectivity and Apple iCloud syncs calendars and reminders. The quality scale gained 11 platinum, 4 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze integrations; the Met Office integration reached bronze.
Which breaking changes should you check before updating?
Read this table before you press update.
| Integration | What changes and what to do |
|---|---|
| Authentication | Legacy mode removed; usernames normalised to lowercase with whitespace trimmed. Check scripts that match on the old username. |
| SolarEdge Local | Removed. Move to the new SolarEdge Modbus integration. |
| MQTT | The publish and dump actions require an admin account. Check automations that run as non-admin users. |
| Synology DSM | Reboot and shutdown actions require an admin account. |
| Telegram bot | Download directory paths must be in allowlist_external_dirs. |
| UniFi Network | Cannot be reconfigured by re-adding it; use the Reconfigure option. |
| Sofar | Inverters without energy meters lose invalid load, import and export energy sensors. |
| easyEnergy / EnergyZero | "Periods priced equal or lower/higher" sensors renamed; unit changes from hours to a count. |
| Teslemetry | Streaming vehicles lose polling-only entities. |
| OpenEVSE | Charging status uses snake_case states such as charging and not_connected. |
| Rejseplanen | Needs an API v2 key and UI setup; extra attributes removed. |
| State conditions | Using for with state attributes, lists or references now fails validation. |
Also changed: Linode and Tank Utility are disabled over unmaintained dependencies, Xbox drops its Game Pass binary sensor, and UpCloud polls at a fixed 60 seconds. Dublin Bus, Etherscan, Sigfox, Travis-CI and Zestimate are among the removed integrations.
The MQTT and authentication changes are the ones to read twice: a script or automation that runs as a non-admin user and publishes via MQTT will stop working until it runs as an admin.
Why does this matter for UK Home Assistant users?
For most UK households the practical effects are the map, the profile page and the energy integrations. The new map should make presence and zone setups easier to read; our presence detection guide explains the person and zone entities it draws on. Zonneplan, easyEnergy and EnergyZero target other European markets, but Sunsynk and SolarEdge Modbus may matter to UK solar owners, and the Met Office integration moving to bronze is a small quality win.
For the previous cycle, see our 2026.9 release round-up.
Should you update to 2026.10 now or wait?
Take a backup, scan the table above against the integrations you actually run, and update when you have time to fix anything that breaks. Our backup and restore guide shows how. If you rely on MQTT publishing, SolarEdge Local or a Synology or UniFi setup, wait a few days and read community reports first. No 2026.10.1 patch release had been published when this was updated, so the .0 release has no patch history yet.
Related: Nanoleaf has also opened its lights to AI assistants through MCP. Here is how the Nanoleaf MCP server works and how it sits alongside Home Assistant.
