Home Assistant 2026.9 was released on 2 September 2026, and it is a release about visibility rather than new hardware: it adds a Matter network map, an Active alerts panel on the security dashboard, an Activity view that shows the full chain of what triggered what, and a unified Sources filter in History. Under the hood, Modbus devices such as inverters and heat pumps can now be configured from the UI, and 13 new integrations arrive alongside sun triggers for golden hour and blue hour. The update is safe for most homes, but it removes the VLC integration outright, strips the deprecated battery_level property from vacuum entities, and changes LLM tool names, so anyone with custom dashboards, vacuum automations or AI agents should read the breaking changes below first.
What has changed in Home Assistant 2026.9?
Matter network map. Settings now includes a map of your Matter fabric that separates Thread from Wi-Fi devices, marks border routers and shows signal strength per link. If you have been guessing why a Thread sensor keeps dropping, this is the first built-in tool that shows the path it takes. We covered the beta version in our 2026.9 beta preview; the stable release is functionally the same view.
Security dashboard alerts and favourites. The security dashboard gains an Active alerts section that only appears when something needs attention, with Alert and Warning severities, plus a Favorites section for pinning the entities you check most often.
History and Activity. History gets a single Sources panel that filters by floor, area, device, domain or integration, and Activity now shows the causation chain with clickable links back to the automation or trigger that fired, with millisecond timestamps for ordering.
Modbus modernised. Integrations built on the new modbus-connection library share one connection to a device instead of competing for it, and Fronius, Sofar Inverter and Flexit can now be set up from the UI rather than YAML.
Smaller additions. Tile cards gain a light effect selector, vacuum fan speed and climate humidity controls. Sun triggers and conditions add golden hour, blue hour, midnight sun and polar night with time offsets. Network storage shows usage bars that turn amber at 85% and red at 95%. There is a new Serial panel listing connected and missing ports, an MQTT settings page with broker status and a packet publishing tool, and charts can now be navigated by keyboard with screen reader announcements and audio sonification.
Home Assistant Cloud. Subscribers get a redesigned signup flow, real IP addresses in the login log, and a new Soniox speech-to-text engine in Labs aimed at accents and noisy rooms.
Which integrations are new or improved?
The 13 new integrations are Besen and NexBlue EV chargers, Silla Prism wallboxes, Sofar Inverter over Modbus, Flow-it ventilation, Hot Spring spas, ISEO Argo locks, LibreNMS, Ridder HortiMaX greenhouses, Samsung TV ExLink, Specialized Turbo e-bikes, Tonewinner AV and a Collection image integration, plus 15 virtual integrations for Midea-compatible brands such as Carrier and Comfee. We walked through each in our 2026.9 new integrations guide.
Among existing integrations, Shelly gains full camera support with motion detection for the new Shelly Camera, Reolink adds floodlight scheduling, a time sync button and a tamper alarm, Tado zones get a heating circuit selector, Roborock adds dock controls for V1 vacuums, Google Gemini exposes thinking budget options, KNX supports UI-based entity creation, and UniFi Protect can be set up with an API key alone.
What breaks in 2026.9?
- VLC integration removed. The vlc integration is gone entirely; media players that used it need another route such as VLC Telnet — see our step-by-step VLC via Telnet migration guide.
- Vacuum battery_level removed. The deprecated property is dropped from vacuum entities. Automations or cards reading it should switch to the separate battery sensor each vacuum integration now exposes.
- LLM tool names are domain-prefixed. Tools are now named like homeassistant__GetLiveContext and intent__HassTurnOn, which affects anyone building on the LLM API or logging tool calls.
- Update and Z-Wave JS actions need admin. Installing, skipping or clearing skipped updates, and Z-Wave JS user and credential management, are restricted to administrator accounts.
- UniFi Protect requires Protect 7.2.105 or newer, and smart detection switches are always visible now.
- KNX exposes no longer send their first value to the bus automatically unless you enable Send on initialization.
- Persistent notification updates to an existing notification now fire an updated event rather than added.
- Flexit Nordic drops the deprecated fireplace mode switch in favour of the fireplace preset.
Should you update now?
Yes for most installs, once you have a backup. The changes that bite are narrow: media setups built on VLC, vacuum automations that read battery_level, AI agents keyed on tool names, and non-admin accounts that install updates or manage Z-Wave locks. Check those four, update, then open the new Matter network map, which is the single most useful diagnostic this release adds for anyone running Thread devices such as the new Tado Smart Thermostat X.
