Home Assistant 2026.10 is here: new card, simplified automations, and AI via MCP

Home Assistant isn’t slowing down. We barely had time to digest the September release before Home Assistant 2026.10 arrived, bringing a series of changes you’ll notice in everyday use.

There are, of course, new integrations, but the biggest changes are elsewhere. The map has been revamped, automations require fewer steps, dashboards are more flexible, timers can now be used from the screen, and the MCP (Model Context Protocol) server is easier to enable for connecting an AI.

On paper, some of the new features may seem trivial. But when you spend time in Home Assistant every day, these are the changes that save you the most time.

A completely revamped map

This is the most visible change: the map has been rebuilt.

It now uses OpenStreetMap, with vector rendering calculated directly on the device. When you zoom in or out, the display stays sharp, text no longer looks blurry, and areas are drawn more clearly.

The most interesting part is how people and devices are displayed. Until now, when several items were in the same place, Home Assistant grouped them behind a counter. That kept the map from getting cluttered, but you could never tell who was behind that “2” or “3” without clicking.

With 2026.10, markers are easier to read, several people in the same place share a common bubble, and profile photos are displayed directly on the map. You can see at a glance who’s where.

User profiles are better organized—and now have a photo

As it happens, the profile page has also been reorganized. Account, appearance, theme, and security settings are now grouped together logically. Before, I sometimes spent several minutes looking for a setting.

Best of all, you can finally add a photo to your profile. And it actually serves a purpose: it represents each family member on the map. In a family setup, you can instantly recognize your partner or children instead of guessing which marker belongs to whom. That makes quite a difference for anything related to presence.

People, devices, and zones in one panel

The map also gets a side panel listing people, devices, and zones. Select someone and the map centers on their location.

It’s also easier to check location history: what time someone entered or left a zone, when a smartphone left home, and when it came back.

If you use zones in your automations, this is a real plus. Turn off the heating when everyone has left, open the gate when your phone is nearby, get a notification when your daughter arrives at school: all of this is now easier to set up and check. Zone creation also benefits from the same interface.

The map is no longer just there to show where phones are. It’s starting to become a presence-management tool.

Automations lose an unnecessary step

This is probably my favorite new feature in this release.

If you build fairly advanced automations, you’ve probably already added several triggers to the same automation. A simple example: open the blinds at 7:30 a.m. in winter, and at sunrise at other times of the year, with actions that change depending on which trigger started the automation.

Until now, you had to assign an ID to each trigger, then use that ID in a “Triggered by” condition. It worked, but it was a pain.

Now, when an automation has multiple triggers, the “Triggered by” condition lists them directly. There’s no need to go back up the automation and assign them an ID just so you can distinguish between them further down. In a small automation, that’s three fewer clicks. In a scenario with five triggers and just as many branches, it’s much more convenient.

Existing automations that use IDs will keep working; Home Assistant handles the transition.

This is the kind of improvement I like. Nothing to show off to the neighbors, but fewer clicks every week.

Visibility conditions now align with those for automations

Another piece of good news: card visibility conditions are becoming more like those used in automations.

As a reminder, these conditions let you display a dashboard item only when it’s useful. There’s no need to keep the entry camera feed on a third of the screen all the time: you can make it appear only when motion is detected. The same goes for an open-window alert, the car charging card when it’s plugged in, or the pool controls in summer.

The problem is that the two systems didn’t work in quite the same way. 2026.10 brings them closer together, making it much easier to reuse an automation’s logic to control whether a card is displayed. That’s very handy for building dashboards that adapt to the situation.

Tile cards keep evolving

Tile cards are getting a few more tweaks.

Light controls have a new look. Some select entities can display their values as buttons instead of a dropdown list, and for some settings you can replace the slider with + and − buttons.

These are small details, but they matter on a wall-mounted tablet or smartphone. When you walk past the kitchen screen with your hands full, a large button is much more convenient than a small dropdown list.

Timers are finally practical to use from dashboards

Many users know about Home Assistant timers, but few use them from their dashboards. 2026.10 could change that.

Timer entities now support preset durations and controls that are accessible directly from a card. In the kitchen, you can set up 3-, 5-, 8-, and 12-minute buttons: tap one and the countdown starts. Pause, restart, or stop it from the same screen.

And you can take it further. An NFC tag stuck under a packet of pasta that starts the right cooking time. The drying time for glue in the workshop. Manual watering that shuts off by itself in the garden. A time limit for a device.

That’s what I love about Home Assistant: one small interface update, and you immediately come up with a dozen ways to use it.

More readable history

A small fix for those who check their history often: long entity names are displayed more clearly. Before, they were quickly cut off, and when several sensors had similar names, it was hard to tell which line belonged to which one. Labels now have more room.

It’s not what people will remember about the update, but on a dashboard full of temperature probes, open/close sensors, and presence sensors, you’ll quickly notice the difference.

MCP: Home Assistant opens up a little more to AI

This is the new feature that could matter most in the medium term.

Home Assistant has made it easier to enable its MCP server. MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is a protocol that allows an AI to access a service’s tools and information in a structured way. In this case, that service is your home. The interface now lets you enable the server in a few clicks and displays the addresses to enter in your AI application.

In practical terms, instead of simply chatting with an AI, you can give it access to your setup. You could ask it, “Why has it been colder in the living room for the past two days?” and let it cross-reference temperatures, heating status, open windows, and history. Or tell it, “Get the house ready for our vacation tomorrow morning,” and let it choose what to do with the devices you’ve allowed it to control.

I’m cautious about this. Letting an AI act on your home isn’t the same as asking it to summarize a PDF. You’ll need to carefully choose what permissions you give it and which actions you allow it to perform.

But I like the idea: Home Assistant could become a standard bridge between AI and the smart home, without locking you into a manufacturer.

Modbus comes to the interface

If you monitor your solar production, heat pump, charging station, or other electrical equipment, you’re probably familiar with Modbus. This protocol is used everywhere in industry and energy.

2026.10 adds a Modbus control panel to the interface, making it easier to manage the connection and diagnose problems. Most users won’t notice it. Those who retrieve data from an inverter, on the other hand, will appreciate it. And given the role Home Assistant plays in managing energy at home, it makes sense to see this kind of tool arrive.

Rename a device without breaking its naming scheme

You probably know the problem: you add a device, Home Assistant creates its entities, you rename the device… and the entities don’t follow along the way you’d like.

A new option lets you name an entity after its device. When you rename the device, its main entity follows suit. With twenty devices, you can manage without it. With several hundred entities, keeping names tidy quickly becomes a necessity.

And integrations keep improving

As with every release, there’s also everything that doesn’t make the major announcements. Many integrations gain entities or features, Matter continues to move forward, and several supported devices are improved.

That’s one of Home Assistant’s strengths: each update affects both the core system and its huge catalog of integrations. A setup combining Zigbee, Matter, MQTT, Shelly, Aqara, Philips Hue, and energy equipment often benefits from small fixes that no one talks about.

A few breaking changes to check before updating

As usual, make a backup before clicking Install, and review the breaking changes if you use any more specialized integrations.

A few things to keep an eye on:

• MQTT: publishing and dumping are now restricted to administrators.
• Synology DSM: restarting or shutting down the NAS now requires administrator privileges.
• Telegram Bot: make sure your download folder is included in the allowed folders.
• Other changes affect authentication and a few specific integrations.

Nothing that should affect most users. But if your setup manages heating, alarms, blinds, or energy, the rule hasn’t changed: back up, read the breaking changes that apply to you, then update.

As usual, the Home Assistant test environment has been updated to this latest version, so you can try it out right now before even installing it at home :)

Home Assistant 2026.10: fewer clicks, more possibilities

This release makes progress on several fronts at once. The map is more pleasant to use and changes how people and zones are managed, profiles are better organized, dashboards are more flexible, and timers can finally be used from a touchscreen.

But it’s the work on automations that I like most. Selecting the trigger directly in a “Triggered by” condition, without going through IDs, seems almost ridiculously minor as a new feature. But when you create automations every week, it’s exactly the kind of change you notice right away.

On the AI side, MCP shows where Home Assistant wants to go: a home where you no longer need to anticipate every scenario in advance. We’re not there yet—not by a long shot—but it’s starting to take shape.

Not bad for a monthly update!