What's new in HomeAssistant 2026.3

Home Assistant 2026.3: A clean sweep and a bunch of new features

1. Robot Vacuums: Finally, targeted cleaning

The biggest star of version 2026.3 is direct area mapping for vacuums. No more hunting for secret room codes in YAML. In the entity settings, you can now simply link segments from your vacuum's map to your areas in HA.

• Support: Currently for Matter, Roborock, and Ecovacs.
• Voice readiness: This feature paves the way for you to say "clean the living room" without complex script setups.

2. Android as a local voice satellite

The Android app now experimentally supports wake word detection directly on the device.

• Privacy: Audio is not processed in the cloud, but directly in your processor (microWakeWord engine).
• Options: Choose between "Okay Nabu", "Hey Jarvis", or "Hey Mycroft".
• Tip: This feature impacts battery life; we recommend automating it to turn on only when you are at home on Wi-Fi.

3. Voice Control: To-Do List management

Assist is getting even smarter. It can now not only add and check off items on your to-do lists but also remove them completely. Just say "remove milk from the shopping list" and it’s done.

4. Energy Dashboard: Details that matter

The energy panel has been reorganized for better clarity:

• Water has its own graph: The water section has gained its own Sankey diagram, just like electricity.
• Live Badges: In the "Now" view, you can see real-time water flow, gas flow, and electricity consumption.
• Better settings: Energy configuration is now split into clear tabs (Electricity, Gas, Water).

5. Automation: Continue on Error

The visual automation editor finally includes the "Continue on error" option. If you have a step in an automation that occasionally fails (e.g., an unavailable service or a TV that is off), you can set the automation to proceed with the next steps regardless. You can find this under the three dots menu for each action.

6. Dashboards: Footers and Windows

The new dashboard style ("Sections") has been improved with footer cards, which stay fixed at the bottom of the view. Additionally, the Security dashboard now correctly displays automated windows alongside door sensors.

7. Better performance with Python 3.14

Home Assistant now runs on Python 3.14. For the average user, this means one thing: speed. The system has faster response times, lightning-fast startups, and more efficient memory management. If you use Home Assistant OS or Supervised, the upgrade is completely automatic.

8. New integrations and improvements

The March release is overflowing with connectivity news:

• Liebherr: Finally full support for refrigerators and freezers of this brand.
• OneDrive for Business: A new backup option for Microsoft 365 business accounts.
• Proxmox VE: More detailed sensors for CPU, RAM, and disk usage of your virtual machines.
• Matter: Support for CO (carbon monoxide) sensors and TVOC air quality sensors.
• Anthropic: Support for the latest Claude 4.6 model with adaptive thinking.

Conclusion and recommendation

Version 2026.3 proves that Home Assistant is maturing. It's no longer just about adding features, but about fine-tuning them. As always, create a backup before updating and check the "Backward-incompatible changes" list, especially if you use older YAML integrations that are now moving to the UI (e.g., InfluxDB).

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