Quick summary: Home Assistant 2026.11.1 is a stable patch release published on 9 November 2026. It repairs HomeKit camera motion events, sleeping Shelly device discovery, ESPHome serial-proxy handling, MQTT payload validation and several smart-home integrations. It is a Home Assistant Core update, not the separate Home Assistant OS 18.5 kernel update.
Home Assistant has released 2026.11.1 with a broad set of corrections for the large 2026.11 feature release. The patch does not add another headline platform feature; its value is in fixing behaviours that could leave cameras, sleeping devices, covers, sensors or integrations in the wrong state.
The most practical fixes in 2026.11.1
| Area | Verified change |
|---|---|
| HomeKit cameras | Camera motion events that never reached HomeKit are fixed |
| Shelly RPC | Restored sleeping devices can add newly discovered entities when they wake; covers at position zero are correctly treated as closed |
| ESPHome | Serial-proxy URLs use the capabilities API correctly, and the climate defrosting action is mapped |
| MQTT | Payload encodings are validated and unknown encodings are handled on receipt |
| SimpliSafe | Sensors reported offline are now marked unavailable |
| Marketplace | Repository README data is fetched again after installation or removal, with cleaner rate-limit error logging |
The HomeKit correction matters for automations that depend on a camera’s motion signal appearing in Apple Home. The release note describes the previous failure plainly: those motion events were not reaching HomeKit. This patch repairs the event path; it does not add new camera hardware support or change the camera’s own detection algorithm.
Sleeping Shelly devices should recover more cleanly
Battery-powered and sleeping devices can be awkward to restore because they may not be awake when Home Assistant starts. Version 2026.11.1 allows a restored Shelly RPC device to add new entities when it next wakes. A separate correction makes a Shelly RPC cover at position zero report as closed rather than remaining in an inconsistent state.
These are Home Assistant-side fixes. They do not update Shelly firmware, and users should not assume they change the radio range or wake schedule of the physical device.
ESPHome, MQTT and Zigbee changes
For ESPHome users, the patch switches the serial-proxy capabilities path to the correct URL builder and maps the ESPHome climate “defrosting” action. The latter lets Home Assistant represent that reported operating action instead of losing the distinction. This does not install new firmware on ESPHome nodes; it updates how Home Assistant Core handles data from them. The recent ESPHome 2026.11.0b3 release remains a separate firmware-framework pre-release.
MQTT now validates payload encoding and handles an unknown encoding when receiving a message, reducing the chance that malformed metadata produces an avoidable failure. ZHA is updated to version 2.4.3, but the Home Assistant release note does not attribute a specific new end-user feature to that dependency bump, so it should be treated as maintenance rather than a new Zigbee capability.
LoRaWAN, energy and network integrations also receive repairs
The new LoRaWAN framework introduced in 2026.11 receives two connection-library updates, while ChirpStack connection failures involving HTTP/2 or certificates now get clearer explanations. Elsewhere, Network UPS Tools alarm sensors update correctly, a TP-Link Omada KeyError affecting device and switch-port sensors is fixed, and SolarEdge Modbus retries when the first subsystem times out.
Home Assistant also restored myUplink energy-log sensors that had been removed, corrected a Kostal Plenticore integration fault after firmware updates, and fixed WeatherFlow Cloud entities that could become stuck when a station disappeared from an API response.
Should users install it?
Home Assistant 2026.11.1 is the current stable Core release and is primarily a reliability update. Users affected by any of the named integrations have a clear reason to install it; for other installations, taking a fresh backup and applying the normal stable update remains the sensible route. The release notes do not present 2026.11.1 as a security advisory or list a new breaking change.
This version should not be confused with Home Assistant OS 18.5, which updates the Linux kernel on Raspberry Pi and Home Assistant YellowPriceAliExpress price. Systems using Home Assistant OS may need both layers updated, but they solve different problems.
