If you’ve been waiting for a release that touches almost every corner of Home Assistant, 2026.5 is the one. From brand-new dashboard cards to a wave of new automation triggers, this update delivers a significant number of quality-of-life improvements alongside some genuinely exciting new capabilities. I tested the beta ahead of this Wednesday’s release — here’s a full breakdown of what to expect.
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New Dashboard Cards and Improvements
The Shortcut Card is the headline dashboard addition. It’s a versatile new card that can do three things: navigate to a specific view on any of your dashboards, launch Assist (including start-listening mode), or perform a Home Assistant action directly. That last option is the most powerful — configure it to turn off all your lights, trigger a script, or fire any service call, complete with a custom label, icon, and color. Like the Tile Card, it also supports hold and double-tap behaviors for extra interactions.
A new built-in Maintenance Dashboard is now available under Settings → Dashboards. At launch it shows battery states for all your devices in a single overview, with more categories promised for future releases. You can pin it to your sidebar via the three-dot menu.
The existing Security Dashboard gains a new Activity List that logs all state changes across your security devices — locks, sensors, and anything else in that category. It’s a handy running history without needing to dig into the main history panel.
The Overview Dashboard also gets more flexible. The summaries section is now customizable — you choose which categories appear — and you can add direct shortcuts to developer tools, automations, or any other part of Home Assistant you visit regularly.
Tile Card Gets Bigger
The Tile Card continues to evolve. Media player tiles now support configurable playback controls (choose which buttons appear), plus volume sliders and volume buttons. Weather tiles gain daily and hourly forecast features — showing temperatures and precipitation at a glance. Vacuums and lawn mowers receive improved animations in their more-info panels, making them feel noticeably more polished. There’s also a small but welcome visual refresh for entity toggles.
Radio Frequency and ESPHome Serial Port Support
Two new hardware integration capabilities make their debut. Radio frequency (RF) device support is now built in — use an RM4 Pro or an ESPHome device to control RF hardware. The Honeywell String Lights and Novy Cooker Hood are the first two integrations to leverage this.
The second is serial port over network support via ESPHome. Connect an ESPHome device to any legacy RS232 hardware, and you can control it over your network through Home Assistant. It’s a clever bridge for older devices that would otherwise be impossible to integrate — place your ESP near the device and you’re done.
Automation Triggers Get a Major Expansion
The automation trigger library sees one of its biggest updates in recent releases. New triggers include:
- Media player: paused/playing, started playing, stopped playing, turned on/off
- Timer: finished, canceled, paused, restarted, started
- Doorbell: doorbell rang (support depends on your integration)
- Remote: turned on/off (with optional delay)
- Updates: update became available
The purpose-specific trigger editor also gains support for ‘at least’ duration logic. You can now say: when at least one light in this group has been on for five minutes — do something. Welcome back to a feature that was missing from the new interface.
Template Documentation Renewed
The template documentation has been completely overhauled into a proper learning guide. It now features quick-start examples, function-level reference pages (parameters, return values, usage examples), and dedicated chapters on dates and times, formatting, and more. If you’ve ever put off learning Jinja2 templates in Home Assistant, this is your moment.
New Integrations and Noteworthy Improvements
New integrations in 2026.5 include Denon RS232, Duco, Eurotronic, Fumis, Honeywell String Lights, Kiosker (for iPad/iPhone kiosk setups), Victron GX, and OpenDisplay for ePaper devices. Noteworthy improvements land across MQTT, Matter, ESPHome, Shelly, Sonos, Apple TV, Music Assistant, Roborock, WLED, Broadlink, Home Connect, OpenAI, SwitchBot, Tado, SolarEdge, and Anthropic.
Two quality-of-life wins are worth calling out. Mobile app notifications are now entities — meaning you can group phones together and send a notification to all of them with a single automation action. And the integration detail page finally has a search bar, so you can filter long device lists in seconds.
Conclusion
Home Assistant 2026.5 is a well-rounded release with something for almost every type of user. Dashboard builders get the new Shortcut Card and Maintenance Dashboard. Automation enthusiasts get a significantly expanded trigger library. Hardware tinkerers gain RF and serial port support via ESPHome. And if you’ve been putting off templates, the new documentation makes it approachable.
The final release drops on the first Wednesday of May. Check the [LINK: Home Assistant 2026.5 release notes] for the full changelog, and watch the beta walkthrough video for a live demo of everything covered here.
