I've shipped a lot of things in Home Assistant over the years. This might be the biggest one, and also the most boring one. I'm weirdly proud of both.
Starting with Home Assistant 2026.11, HACS (the Home Assistant Community Store) is built into Home Assistant. It's called the Marketplace now, and you'll find it under Settings, Marketplace. That's where all the custom integrations, dashboard cards and themes from the community live.
The code has been public for a few weeks (open source, after all), so some of you already spotted it. A few YouTubers even made videos about it before I wrote a single word. Fair enough. But I've also seen a lot of questions and worries pop up, so let me answer them myself.
The short version
When you upgrade, it should feel like nothing happened. Except the name changed. That's the goal.
Home Assistant migrates everything you had in HACS into the Marketplace automatically. It moves your data over, cleans up your old HACS install for you, and all your integrations, cards and updates are just there, like before. You don't have to do anything.
Why are we doing this?
HACS was founded by Joakim (better known as ludeeus). About a year and a half ago, he donated it to the Open Home Foundation. That was a very generous thing to do, and it makes sure HACS is here to stay for many years to come. He's still involved in HACS today, and I'm sure he will be involved in the Marketplace in the future too. Joakim, thank you.
The moment Joakim donated it, I knew it had to be built into Home Assistant. Since then, it has been sitting on the side, which is a pity for something almost our entire community uses. So I'm really happy the day is finally here. We're taking the project in and embracing it, because I believe this is an important thing for our community to have, and to grow.
And there is a lot in there. There are more integrations and cards in HACS than Home Assistant ships out of the box. So much good stuff that people always wanted, but getting to it was a struggle. Setting up HACS for the first time could be pretty daunting.
Building it in makes it a core part of Home Assistant. It gets the same care as the rest of Home Assistant, and it's much easier for us to work on and develop further. It also fits one of the Open Home Foundation's goals: making Home Assistant more approachable. Everything the community builds should be one click away, for everyone.
So what actually changed?
The main goal was to change as little as possible. But while we were moving house anyway, we fixed a few things that always bugged me.
Installing a new integration used to be quite the ritual. Let's take Spook as an example (I may be slightly biased). Open HACS, find Spook, download it, restart Home Assistant, go to Devices and services, click Add integration, search for Spook again, and only then set it up. A bit odd, if you think about it.
Now you search for Spook in the Marketplace, click Install, and you land straight in the setup flow. A few seconds later, you're done. No restart.
Updates still need a restart, for now. That has to do with how Python and Home Assistant work today. But getting something new into your home is now a lot nicer.
The page you see when you look at an integration got a bit better too. It used to be mostly the big README. Now you also get some extra information, like how many installs and stars something has, so you have a better idea of what you're getting into before you click install.
One more thing. What you find in the Marketplace is made by the community, and that means you're running third-party code in your home. We want people to understand what that means. So the first time you open the Marketplace, there's a screen in between that explains, as carefully and clearly as we can, what you're getting into.
What happens when I upgrade?
Nothing you need to do. Upgrade to 2026.11 and Home Assistant takes care of it. Your stuff comes along, your updates keep coming.
And that goes for every install, Docker included. That's one of the nicest parts of building it in: it just works out of the box, no matter how you install Home Assistant. Home Assistant OS, Container, it doesn't matter. Set up Home Assistant and the Marketplace is there.
If you ever installed HACS on a Container install, you know why this matters. Download a zip file, unpack it into the right folder, restart, hope for the best. Basically installing it by hand. It sucked.
Do I still need to install HACS?
No. And you can't, actually: on 2026.11 and newer, Home Assistant prevents installing HACS separately, to avoid conflicts. That way nobody, new users included, can accidentally shoot themselves in the foot, and everyone just gets the new experience. The old HACS won't get any new releases either. Its successor ships with Home Assistant itself, so every time you upgrade Home Assistant, you get the latest Marketplace too. If you want all the details, the documentation has a "Coming from HACS" section: Marketplace documentation.
Do I now have to pay for integrations?
No. Nope. Nee.
The word "Marketplace" made some people nervous, and I get it. But nothing costs money, and nothing is going to start costing money because of this change.
Then why the new name?
I'm glad you asked, because we did think about this one for a while.
First of all, we wanted a clean break. HACS had a great run, and this is a new chapter, so it deserves a name that says so.
Second, "Home Assistant Community Store" might not stay accurate forever. We have ideas for the future. Ideas, not plans, nothing has been decided. For example: what if official integrations showed up in there too? Or what if integrations from Core moved into the Marketplace, so you could get them and update them independently from Home Assistant releases? If it's not only community stuff anymore, the word "community" stops making sense. And then you're left with "Home Assistant Store". Abbreviate that and you get HAS. Which sounds a lot like hass, the old abbreviation for Home Assistant. And in German, Hass means hate. Not exactly the vibe we're going for. Yeah, no.
And honestly, everybody hears "store" and thinks of the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Places where you go to buy things. That's not the feeling we want here. A marketplace can be a local, communal thing. A place where people come together and exchange stuff. It doesn't have to be about money at all. Think of the farmers market in town on a Saturday morning.
I build integrations or cards. Do I need to change anything?
Don't worry, nothing changes for you. We might add things in the future, but for now, everything keeps working the way it does today.
This is the starting point
The Marketplace you'll get in November is basically HACS with a new name and a few improvements. That's on purpose. It's the first version, and we're just getting started.
What a marketplace for Home Assistant could become is still wide open, and I'd love your ideas and creativity on that. There's a Marketplace section in the feature request discussions on GitHub, in the Home Assistant organization. Bugs go to the Home Assistant issue tracker now, not to the HACS repository.
So, upgrade, look around, and tell me what you think. And if it feels like nothing changed: perfect, that means we did it right.
../Frenck
