ICC 2026 – what is coming in Ignition 2027
In September, Inductive Automation gathered a record number of people – over 1,800 – at the Ignition Community Conference (ICC) in Sacramento. The main topic was the next version of the platform: Ignition 2027. Here is what we think is most interesting for our customers.
One new version a year
Ignition is moving to one major version a year, plus a long-term support (LTS) version with five years of updates. The plan looks like this:
- October/November 2026: public beta starts
- February 2027: Ignition 2027 is released
- First quarter of 2028: first LTS release of 2027
Ignition 8.3 is still the LTS version, supported through 2030. So you can adopt each new version when it suits you – or stay on LTS and upgrade at your own pace.
AI built into Ignition
The biggest news is Ignition Catalyst. Catalyst Core is included at no extra cost and connects language models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini – or a model you run yourself – to Ignition. It helps with scripts, expressions, SQL and screens, and explains in plain words what is happening on the server.
Catalyst Agent lets us build our own agents, for example one that finds the cause of an alarm before the notification is sent. It has MCP support and an AI chat that can be embedded in the screens.
Important for industry: all actions from the AI require explicit approval, changes can be rolled back with two clicks, and everything can run locally without internet. The AI features are entirely optional.
High-availability history
Together with Tiger Data comes a dedicated TimescaleDB edition for Ignition and an Enterprise Historian module for large volumes of data. The built-in historian also gets redundancy with no setup, scheduled backups and failover to a standby server without gaps in the data.
Direct connection to Beckhoff
Ignition 2027 gets a dedicated driver that talks directly to Beckhoff controllers, without middleware or extra licences. Since Beckhoff is one of the platforms we use most, this is news we are glad to see.
And much more
16 new chart components, redundant OPC UA connections, several login solutions on the same server, an audit log that shows the previous value, an on-screen keyboard for touch screens, import and export of tags to Excel, and support for the EU Cyber Resilience Act.
What does it mean for you?
If you have Ignition today, there is no reason to rush – 8.3 is supported for many years to come. If you are facing a new project or a larger expansion, it is worth knowing what is coming.
As a Gold Certified Ignition integrator, we follow developments closely. Read more about SCADA or get in touch with us if you want to know what Ignition 2027 could mean for your plant.