What has changed with HACS and the Home Assistant Marketplace?
HACS is moving into Home Assistant itself. The integration ships as Marketplace, built in and enabled by default, under Settings > Marketplace for administrators. It installs community integrations, dashboard cards, themes and templates from GitHub, using the same hacs/default catalogue and hacs.json format as before.
HACS maintainer ludeeus announced the move on 16 October 2026, saying development now continues inside Home Assistant rather than in the old repository. The Marketplace code was merged into Home Assistant's development branch on 1 October, and the project's documentation lists 2026.11 as the release that introduces it. The standalone HACS install script has also been changed to refuse to install on 2026.11 or newer, so you cannot stay on the old integration after updating.
| Area | HACS today | Marketplace in 2026.11 |
|---|---|---|
| Install | Add manually, GitHub sign-in needed | Built in, no setup |
| GitHub account | Required | Only for custom repositories and a higher request limit |
| Catalogue update checks | HACS polling | Every 6 hours |
| AppDaemon apps and Python scripts | Managed | No longer managed |
| Dashboard resource path | /hacsfiles/ | /local/community/ (old paths still work) |
Will my existing HACS setup migrate automatically?
Yes, according to the documentation. On the first start after updating, everything installed through HACS stays installed and keeps receiving updates, and your custom repositories carry over. Update entities keep their names, areas, labels and entity IDs, so automations and dashboards that reference them should keep working. The HACS integration and its files are then removed, and /hacs bookmarks open the Marketplace instead.
The documentation does not describe a way to roll the migration back by downgrading to 2026.10, and recommends restoring a backup instead. That makes a backup the one step worth doing before you update. Our backup and restore guide walks through it.
What could break when HACS becomes the Marketplace?
A handful of setups need a manual check. The list below comes from the Marketplace documentation:
- Custom repositories without a
hacs.jsonfile stay installed but cannot be updated. - YAML dashboard resources need their paths changed. A repair reminds you, but the Marketplace cannot add resources for you.
- AppDaemon apps and Python scripts keep running, but are no longer managed, so they stop receiving updates. The Marketplace also rejects apps as custom repositories.
- Templates that call
integration_entities('hacs')need changing tointegration_entities('marketplace'). - Tools and custom integrations that use
hacs/WebSocket commands, or readhass.data["hacs"], find nothing.
Why does this matter for Home Assistant users?
For most people it removes a setup step and a GitHub account requirement: catalogue content can be browsed, installed and updated without signing in. Connecting GitHub uses device-code sign-in, and the documentation says it does not request private-repository or write access. The first install of an integration may not need a restart, though updates still do.
It does not make community code safer. The documentation states that nothing in the Marketplace is "tested, audited, or supported by the Home Assistant project", and you must accept a warning before installing or updating anything. Installing a community integration that replaces a built-in one needs an extra confirmation. If the catalogue marks a repository as critical, for example because an update deletes data, the Marketplace uninstalls it immediately and restarts Home Assistant, then raises a repair explaining why.
Read author, recent activity and community feedback before installing, as you would with HACS. If you are weighing up what to run on a UK home setup, our 2026.10 pre-update checklist shows the same backup-first routine for a normal monthly release.
What we don't know yet
The release date is only "November": Home Assistant usually ships on the first Wednesday of the month, but that is a pattern, not a promise. There is no 2026.11 beta yet, so behaviour could still change, and these details have been read from documentation rather than tested hands-on. Expect the first release to largely mirror HACS as it exists today, with enhancements later. Until 2026.11 lands, there is nothing you need to do except make sure your HACS-installed content is up to date and that you know which custom repositories you use.
The Marketplace is one part of the release: see the Home Assistant 2026.11 beta guide for the new integrations and breaking changes.
