Home Assistant 2026.11 shipped on November 4 with HACS built in. The community store is now a core component called Marketplace, and the release post says it plainly: the HACS installer stops at 2026.11, so a separate HACS installation is no longer possible on this version.
If you already run HACS, the project says it migrates when Home Assistant starts after the update. Installed projects keep updating, and custom repositories and update entities carry over.
What changes
The Marketplace lives under Settings and is admin-only. You don’t need a GitHub account to browse, install or update projects. Installing skips the restart, though updates still need one. The old HACS won’t get new releases, because the Marketplace now ships with every Home Assistant update.
Custom repositories are the exception. Per the release post, those require a GitHub connection, using device sign-in that only reads public information. Downloads come from GitHub by default, and mirrors exist for places where GitHub is unreachable. The post warns to only pick a download source you trust, since mirrors and proxies put a third party in the path.
Two smaller breakages are worth knowing about. A German write-up from TechZeitGeist points out that a template using integration_entities('hacs') finds nothing after the update. You’d need integration_entities('marketplace') instead. The release post also changes entity naming. Cards and rows without a name now show the device name followed by the entity name. Entity IDs don’t change, so automations keep working, but your dashboards will look different.
The part that didn’t change
Being built in doesn’t make the content reviewed. Matter Alpha’s early report quotes the project: Home Assistant does not test, audit or support the content distributed through Marketplace. Users must accept a warning before installing or updating community content, and replacing a built-in integration needs an extra confirmation.
The release post says the same thing from the install side. Only administrators can install, and you accept a risk notice on first use. Browsing works before that. Installing and updating doesn’t.
So the trust model is the same as before. A custom integration is code running inside your Home Assistant process, with access to your devices, your network and whatever tokens you’ve handed it. The maintainer is still one person with a GitHub account. What changed is how easy it is to click install.
What it means for your setup
Making installs easier is good for the project, and plenty of people were put off by the old HACS setup. It also moves custom code from “something you went and found” to “something in the main menu.” That shifts how casually people will treat it.
Before you update, take a full backup. The migration removes the old HACS files, and the TechZeitGeist checklist recommends a backup for exactly that reason. Then search your templates and dashboards for HACS references and check which custom integrations you actually still use.
The reboot angle is a real improvement. If installs from the Marketplace stop forcing a restart, you’ll patch custom integrations more often, and that’s the right direction. Unpatched add-ons are where a lot of home setups get hurt.
Where we land
We run Home Assistant here, and our rule is that every custom integration has to justify itself. If a built-in integration does the job, we use it. If a custom one is the only option, we read what it does, check when the maintainer last committed, and keep it off anything that touches credentials or the network edge.
The Marketplace doesn’t change that rule, and we think it makes it more important. A built-in store feels endorsed even when the project says it isn’t. Treat the warning screen as the actual policy, not a click-through. Update, take the backup first, and then prune the list down to what you’d defend if it broke.