Software » Media Center » Kodi 21.3 / 22.0 RC2

Kodi 22 "Piers" RC 2
Prerelease

Team Kodi

November 12, 2026
·
5 min read
Announcing the second release candidate of Kodi 22 "Piers"!

With the major features in place for RC 1, the past month has focused on polishing them and fixing regressions. Over 200 pull requests have been merged, with particular attention to game emulation, RetroAchievements, Blu-ray playback, HDR, audio passthrough, and video library reliability.

We've also completed some platform-specific improvements, including HDR support on tvOS and expanded Dolby Vision support on Xbox. Alongside these changes are numerous stability and performance fixes across Kodi.

It's been over two years since the initial Kodi 21 "Omega" release, so for a refresh on the new features in v22, see the RC 1 blog post.

For the finer details of fixes and improvements in RC 2, here's the changelog:

Changes since v22 RC 1
Video
Added chapter, scene marker, and bookmark jumping using Up/Down during video playback
Improved display mode selection for cropped video content
Fixed 3D mode detection from filenames and persistence of the stereo inversion setting
Fixed playback continuing after ejecting a disc
Fixed handling of malformed HEVC metadata and stacked video files containing ISO images
Blu-ray
Improved Blu-ray movie and episode playlist selection, including multi-angle discs and alternate playlists
Fixed Blu-ray menus disappearing or being hidden when changing subtitle streams
Fixed possible crash when transitioning from a Blu-ray Java menu to the main feature
Fixed playback of Blu-ray folder rips containing unrelated files in the playlist directory
Fixed artwork locations and handling of multiple versions and episodes in Blu-ray folder rips
HDR
Added HDR10 and HLG playback on tvOS, including compatible Dolby Vision Profile 8 base-layer handling
Added Dolby Vision Low Latency support on Xbox for profiles 5, 7, 8, and 10
Fixed HDR color space detection and tagging on Android
Fixed HDR videos displaying a black screen during slideshows on some Linux-based platforms
Fixed SDR screenshots appearing too dark in some image viewers
Audio
Improved passthrough audio/video synchronization, particularly after seeking on Android
Fixed brief audio muting or loss of audio during synchronization
Fixed dropouts with high-bitrate 96 kHz TrueHD passthrough
Fixed incorrect DTS-HD detection during playback
Improved Windows XAudio2 handling of unsupported sample rates, including those used by some game emulators
Fixed AAC playback on webOS when the input stream format is unknown
Subtitles
Fixed subtitles not reappearing after being hidden, especially with inputstream add-ons
Improved subtitle positioning and matching of external subtitles for local .strm files
Fixed local drives missing when browsing for external subtitles
Games
Reduced input lag, repeated frames, and audio skips by synchronizing game emulation with the display
Improved video shader compatibility and added categorized browsing of video filters, including CRT, handheld, and NTSC effects
Expanded RetroAchievements with achievement sets, missable achievements, game completion progress, and active achievement indicators
Improved RetroAchievements Encore Mode to distinguish previously earned achievements
Improved savestate thumbnails, including hardware-rendered games, and fixed restoring savestates with different memory sizes
Improved organization of per-game saves and fixed incorrect disc selection when starting multi-disc games
Added a game manual button to Estuary and improved error messages for missing BIOS files
Added mouse support for emulated mouse controllers and improved rumble handling when controllers disconnect
Added support for emulator-requested fast-forward, including tape loading
Library
Added "Refresh all content" to the video source context menu, with improvements to library refresh handling
Fixed video scans stopping unexpectedly, losing TV shows or episodes, or failing to retry unsuccessful metadata lookups
Fixed database upgrades from older Kodi versions that could leave the movie library empty
Improved cleaning and removal of movie versions and extras
Fixed unnecessary re-importing of existing movies during library updates
Fixed loss or alteration of metadata when exporting and importing separate NFO files
Fixed TV show library information when media files are moved
Improved local artwork discovery and caching, including Blu-ray rips and archived media
Fixed migration of the video version scanning preference during settings upgrades
Music
Fixed selecting a track from a cue sheet always starting playback at the first track
Fixed several music tagging, artist refresh, and music box set issues
Pictures
Fixed incomplete decoding of large HEIF and AVIF photos, including tiled images
Reduced memory usage when loading oversized JPEG images
Fixed slideshows stalling on broken images or unplayable videos
Fixed unwanted display mode changes during video slideshows
UI / Skinning
Added colored media flag icons in Estuary
Improved movie version icons and labels in Estuary
Fixed missing GUI updates and rendering glitches with smart redraw
Fixed notifications being lost when another notification arrives during the closing animation
PVR
Improved EPG update performance and memory usage when clients repeatedly announce guide changes
Fixed possible crash when accessing the selected item in the Guide window
Fixed channel navigation after switching channel groups in the Channels OSD
Network
Fixed accessing SMB shares over IPv6 and browsing SMB servers without specifying a share
Fixed UPnP file serving after security-related path handling changes
Fixed buffer overflows in SMB discovery and closed-caption processing
Android
Fixed relaunching Kodi while a previous instance is still shutting down
Fixed possible video playback issues caused by stale MediaCodec buffers after flushing
Fixed CPU usage reporting in the debug overlay
macOS
Fixed possible startup hang when detecting certain USB devices
Developers
Upgraded Python to v3.14.10
Upgraded TagLib to v2.3.2
Improved compatibility with Xcode 27 and modern C23 compilers
Enabled ccache support for Visual Studio builds on Windows
Known issues
Warning: GUI settings can get erased if downgrading to v22 from a v23 nightly. Fix expected in next release.
On Linux, HDR video playback may make some GUI/OSD elements too transparent, washed out, or fuzzy
If Kodi is provided without TagLib 2.3.2, Matroska tagging is degraded back to v21
Download link

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...