HACS is becoming the built-in Marketplace in Home Assistant 2026.11: what changes when you update

HACS, the community store for custom integrations, dashboard cards and themes, is moving into Home Assistant itself. The code for a built-in Marketplace integration was merged into Home Assistant’s development branch on October 1, 2026, and the development version now identifies itself as 2026.11. On October 16 the HACS maintainer posted that “starting with the Home Assistant 2026.11 release in November, it ships built-in as the Marketplace integration”, and hacs.xyz says the same on every page.

Short version: when you update to 2026.11, your HACS downloads should move to the Marketplace on their own and keep updating, and your update entities keep their IDs. You don’t need to do anything first. Check three things before updating: dashboard resources defined in YAML, templates that call integration_entities('hacs'), and custom repositories with no hacs.json file. Standalone HACS can’t be installed on 2026.11 or newer, so this isn’t optional once you update.

What the Marketplace is

It’s HACS ported into Home Assistant with as little change as possible. The pull request describes the goal as bringing HACS in “as much as possible as it is”, with bigger ideas left for later.

A first install of an integration may now load without a restart. Updating an integration still needs one, and a repair offers to restart for you.

Browsing, installing and updating catalog content works without a GitHub account. Connecting one uses GitHub’s device-code sign-in, and the docs say it doesn’t ask for private-repository or write access. Without a connection, the Marketplace shares GitHub’s hourly request limit with the other devices on your internet connection.

What happens to your existing HACS install

The migration runs on the first start after the update. Per the development docs and the pull request:

• Everything you installed with HACS stays installed and keeps getting updates.
• Custom repositories carry over, and update entities keep their names, areas, labels and entity IDs, so automations and dashboards that use them keep working.
• The HACS integration and its files are removed.
• /hacs links and bookmarks open the Marketplace, and old /hacsfiles/ resource paths keep working. New resources are served from /local/community/.

What can still bite you

• Custom repositories without a hacs.json file stay installed, but the Marketplace can’t update them.
• Dashboard resources in YAML: a repair reminds you to change the paths, and the Marketplace can’t add new resources for you.
• AppDaemon apps and Python scripts keep working where they are but are no longer managed, so they stop getting updates. A repair lists them.
• Templates that use integration_entities('hacs') return nothing; use integration_entities('marketplace').
• Tools that talked to HACS directly: the old hacs/ WebSocket commands return an unknown-command error, and custom integrations that read HACS’s storage or hass.data["hacs"] find nothing.
• HACS sidebar options (title and icon) are gone, since it now lives under Settings.

What stays local, and what doesn’t

Nothing changes much here. The Marketplace polls the catalog online, as HACS did; the docs say it checks for new versions every 6 hours. What you install still runs on your own hardware.

The trust model doesn’t change either, and the docs say so plainly. Every user has to accept a warning before anything installs or updates, and nothing in the catalog is “tested, audited, or supported” by the Home Assistant project. The pull request says there are no signatures or checksums on installed files. Two guardrails are new:

• Installing a community integration that replaces a built-in one takes an extra confirmation.
• If the catalog marks a repository critical, the Marketplace uninstalls it at once and restarts Home Assistant.

What to do

• On 2026.10 or older: keep using HACS. The hacs.xyz docs still apply until you update, though Nijhof says the old HACS won’t get new releases from here.
• Before updating to 2026.11: take a backup. Then search your config for integration_entities('hacs') and check whether your dashboard resources are in YAML.
• If you rely on an AppDaemon app or Python script from HACS: plan to update it by hand from now on.
• After updating: look in Settings > Repairs for anything the migration flagged.
• If something breaks: Marketplace bugs go to the home-assistant/core issue tracker under the integration: marketplace label, and problems with a downloaded card or integration go to that project’s own repository.

I couldn’t find anywhere that says whether the migration can be undone by downgrading to 2026.10. The docs say to restore a backup rather than use “Install another version” to go back, so take that backup.

Does this change my picks?

No product picks change. A few guides tell you to install things “through HACS”: the Frigate integration in my Frigate NVR build and the auto-entities and card-mod cards in blueprints worth installing first. On 2026.11 those come from Settings > Marketplace instead, with no GitHub account needed. I’ll update those pages when 2026.11 ships and I can confirm the final wording.