Software » Media Center » Kodi 21.3 / 22.0 RC1

Kodi 22 "Piers" RC 1
Prerelease

Team Kodi

October 10, 2026
·
9 min read
Announcing the first release candidate of Kodi 22 "Piers"!

Since leaving beta, we've been focusing on fixing reported issues and polishing new features. Now, we feel like we've reached the final state we want to ship for v22. We're still tracking a few bugs, but these are mostly contained to the shiny new features introduced in v22.

It's been over two years since the initial Kodi 21 "Omega" release, so before diving into the complete changelog, here are a few highlights from Piers.

Better HDR and video playback
Piers brings major HDR improvements across platforms, including HDR overlays and UHD PGS subtitles, improved subtitle colour handling, HDR-to-SDR subtitle tone mapping, and an upgrade to FFmpeg 9.

Blu-ray got a lot smarter
Blu-ray movie and episode detection has been substantially improved, with better playlist matching, episode handling, library integration and disc navigation.

Games got a major upgrade
RetroPlayer gained shader support, new scaling options, better multi-disc handling, RetroAchievements support, a new cheat engine, and OpenGL hardware rendering for 3D games.

Lots more across Kodi
Piers also brings improvements to the video library and Movie Versions, PVR, Android, webOS and Apple platforms, along with new capabilities such as Android deep links, SVG support and the beginnings of WebAssembly support.

And that's just the short version. Here's the complete changelog for RC 1:

Changes since v22 Beta 2
Video
Upgraded FFmpeg to v9.0.2
Improved handling of near-standard video frame rates
Improved stream parameter detection when reopening streams
Improved detection of PVR, live TV, and other streaming content
Improved HQ scaler selection for stereoscopic video
Fixed hangs when opening incomplete or unresponsive video files
Fixed excessive scanning when seeking past the end of a file
Fixed playback timing when streams temporarily lack timestamps
Fixed incorrect cache state detection for real-time streams
Fixed high CPU usage when a video or audio source starves
Fixed display latency being lost while paused on hardware-plane renderers
Fixed pixel format reporting for some hardware decoders
Fixed handling of malformed NAL units in corrupt streams
Fixed watched-mode handling while browsing Videos
Fixed playback shutdown and player-closing races
Fixed possible crash when closing Kodi during video playback
Fixed black screen after changing display resolution while paused on GLES
Fixed stale video widgets after media details change
Fixed generated video thumbnails using the wrong path
Fixed video thumbnails and default icons restored from library imports
Fixed file orientation and centre-mix metadata being lost after settings updates
Hardened video stacking against malformed and unusual paths
HDR and Subtitles
Improved HDR PGS subtitle colour handling
Added support for HDR overlays, including UHD PGS subtitles
Improved PGS subtitle colour conversion using the video's actual colorimetry
Added HDR-to-SDR tone mapping for PGS subtitles on Windows
Fixed HDR PGS subtitle rendering across GLES platforms
Fixed translucent GUI elements being composited at the wrong opacity over HDR video
Fixed 3D side-by-side PGS subtitles
Fixed forced subtitles not replacing subtitles hidden because they matched the audio language
Fixed subtitle browsing for streams outside configured media sources
Improved HDR type reporting on DRM PRIME platforms
Upgraded libass to v0.17.5
Blu-ray and Discs
Improved Blu-ray movie and episode playlist matching using disc authoring metadata
Improved Blu-ray episode matching heuristics
Improved Blu-ray playlist handling and internal cleanup
Added M2TS aspect-ratio detection
Added indication of Blu-ray playlists already assigned while using the simple menu
Fixed refreshing Blu-ray information and missing stream details
Fixed updating and cleaning library entries containing Blu-ray content
Fixed import/export of folder stacks containing Blu-ray playlists
Fixed deadlock while probing optical discs
Fixed the wrong optical disc being played from the context menu
Fixed ejecting the wrong optical drive
Fixed startup crash on Windows when a DVD is already in the drive
Improved Windows optical-drive state caching and detection
Avoided unnecessary volume reads while enumerating Windows optical drives
Delayed Windows disc probing until the required services are initialized
Fixed discs opened through their own VFS protocol not being classified as video
Audio
Added audio-stream switching to PAPlayer
Improved recovery when an HDMI receiver temporarily disappears
Fixed ALSA error recovery
Improved XAudio device capability handling across device re-enumeration
Fixed a VideoPlayer audio regression that could affect playback when the sink had nothing to wait on
Added additional AudioEngine bitstream-packer test coverage
Music and Audiobooks
Added ReplayGain support for Matroska audio
Restored Nero chapter metadata support for audiobooks
Fixed artist discography information being lost in several update paths
Fixed ID3 tag reading from MP2 files
Improved music GUI performance by loading tags and artwork only when required
Simplified music scraping job scheduling
PVR
Fixed EPG timestamps so they remain valid beyond 2038
Fixed MySQL/MariaDB EPG searches omitting programmes on the final day of a date range
Fixed a five-second suspend delay when no PVR client is enabled
Fixed missing PVR add-ons blocking callers while reporting an error
Improved retrieval of video-library metadata for recording folders
Improved language-code documentation used by PVR providers
Games
Added a cheat engine to RetroPlayer
Added hardware rendering for game clients with Game API 8.2.0
Expanded RetroAchievements with Encore mode, on-screen indicators, and leaderboards
Improved RetroAchievements login error messages
Added support for game add-ons to explicitly identify their platforms
Added disc state to savestates and the rewind buffer
Improved game launching from My Games to avoid blocking the UI
Improved launching of plugin-provided games using their resolved paths
Fixed major RetroPlayer stuttering
Fixed rewind buffer sizing
Fixed savestate selection after deleting a savestate
Fixed black screen after selecting Reset from the in-game OSD
Fixed paused-frame caching with DMA-backed video memory
Fixed DirectX shader input and resource handling
Fixed GLSL shader failure handling
Fixed GLES software-frame texture handling
Fixed in-game menu actions operating on the wrong item
Avoided unnecessary add-on repository access when the required emulator is already known
Changed rewind to default to Off
Improved the game OSD layout in Estuary
Fixed controller capture dialog headings disappearing while listening for input
Library and Sources
Improved video scraping performance
Improved video database episode lookup performance
Improved audio-language display in the video library
Improved Video Versions presentation in Estuary
Improved media flag and version stream-detail ordering
Added Year as a fallback when Premiered information is unavailable
Fixed play status for archive contents played from Videos > Files outside a configured source
Fixed directory artwork being lost when file lists are replaced
Fixed library import saving broken thumbnails or default icons
Fixed video widgets not refreshing after media details change
Improved multi-path source enumeration without unnecessary progress dialogs
Fixed top-level special:// locations being lost from navigation history
Added the Profile directory as an accessible source on all platforms
Improved video NFO export of default version information
UI
Fixed excessive CPU use when progress dialogs are opened from background threads
Fixed Page Up/Down movement in fixed lists with a custom focus position
Fixed panel scrollbar page sizing
Fixed focus restoration occurring before a window has finished initializing
Fixed widget directory jobs being incorrectly reused with different options
Fixed a crash caused by concurrent GUI info-label access
Fixed windows losing their identity when their XML file is unavailable
Fixed the default focus in the media source dialog
Fixed the default icon for video extras
Added support for enabled resource-font add-ons registering their own fonts
Added Player.SeekStepValue for skins
Added a localized label for the Donate button in System Settings
Skinning
Redesigned Estuary media flags with improved context and grouping icons
Improved Stream Selection flag consistency
Improved Video Versions presentation
Improved the game OSD layout
Polished the add-on settings dialog for expanded game add-on settings
Improved version stream-detail ordering
Added Year fallback where Premiered metadata is unavailable
Add-ons and Python
Fixed script add-on arguments being lost during execution
Fixed Addons.ExecuteAddon wait handling
Fixed script waiting after modal add-on installation
Fixed add-on search crashes
Fixed Python getControl() handling of skin toggle buttons
Fixed ownership of objects returned in Python lists
Fixed Python containers returning none incorrectly in several cases
Added support for bytes where Python APIs expect strings
Restored xbmc.__version__ to 3.1.0
Added HDR detail information to Python VideoStreamDetail
Added script execution duration to Python invoker logging
Modernized Python binding generation to use SWIG directly
JSON-RPC
Improved Files.GetDirectory to return library metadata when available
Fixed playlist position remaining stale after its playlist is cleared
Fixed JSONRPC.SetConfiguration dropping configuration namespaces it did not enumerate
Network and UPnP
Fixed a race and possible use-after-free while refreshing network interfaces
Fixed SMB shares becoming unreachable when a hostname resolves to a loop...