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Kodi 22 "Piers" Beta 2
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Kodi 22 "Piers" Beta 1
Prerelease

Team Kodi

June 28, 2026
·
4 min read
Announcing the first Beta release of Kodi 22 "Piers"!

As we move from the Alpha to the Beta stage of the release cycle, the team is happy with the significant number of features and improvements that have come together for v22. Now, the focus becomes stability and performance, leading us to the final v22 release.

If you want the latest and greatest, this release is for you. Being a beta release, there's some possibility of rough edges, and things that previously worked and now stubbornly don't. But fear not, you're part of a relentless community that now has our Beta 1 release to play with. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any faults.

Okay, what's new in this version?

Changelog
Video
Upgraded to FFmpeg 8.1.2
Added live bitrate infolabels
Improved accuracy for chapter changes
Improved handling of chapters read by FFmpeg
Improved tempo settings
Integrated bookmarks into forward/backward skip
Fixed seeking during 1.6x tempo
Fixed AV1 playback with keyframe-filtering=2
Fixed broken OSD for DVDs after Alpha 3
Audio
Fixed possible crash during DTS-HD audio playback
Fixed audio delay for live TV with AC3/EAC3 passthrough
Subtitles
Subtitle visibility improvements
Subtitle timing improvements
Fixed handling of ASS/SSA script headers
Shows the playing video's current subtitle CODEC
Library
Added "Media Details" dialog
Added audio language to media item badges
Added additional HDR formats to the UI
Fixed duplicate taglines in the library view
Fixed various stream detail issues
Improved Blu-ray handling for .nfo files
Improved Blu-ray playcount handling
Improved stacking for movie/folder path names with Roman numerals
Fixed handling of more complex episode ranges
Improved Movie Version scanning behaviour
Improved media badges
Music
Fixed several issues for CUE sheets
Fixed several audiobook issues
Fixed rescanning music items
PVR
Improved daily wake-up timer
Games
Added new Disc Manager
Fixed possible crash when changing resolution
Fixed M3U handling for multi-disc games
Fixed transparency when choosing video filters
Added ability for Amiga controllers to autoconnect
Added "Select" button for Amiga controllers
Network
Fixed NFSv4 file creation with atomic O_EXCL flag
Fixed possible crash when a JSON-RPC TCP client disconnects
Fixed parsing NFS URL options
Fixed reading DVD folders on NFS
Fixed SMB session exhaustion (Windows desktop is limited to 20 connections)
Extended the JSON-RPC method Textures.GetTextures to report texture status
Fixed potential XSS and open redirects in the web UI
Databases
Fixed incompatibility with MySQL 9.6 and above
Fixed incompatibility with MariaDB 10.x remote databases
Fixed possible crash when MySQL server is temporarily unavailable
Added new advancedsettings.xml MySQL/MariaDB timeout element - <connecttimeout>, default 5s
element for MySQL/MariaDB video and music databases (defaults to 5 seconds)

Inputstream add-ons
Added HDR, colour metadata, 10-bit and 12-bit to Inputstream add-ons
Fixed non-encrypted streams in Inputstream add-ons
Peripherals
Improved CEC handling (product of DevCon 2026 outside Barcelona)
Fixed crash when rapidly hotplugging Linux joysticks
Profiles
Fixed possible crash switching to a profile that has never been used before
Fixed migrations across different profiles
Skinning
Blocked clicks on disabled buttons
Small tweaks to default Estuary skin
Fixed nested label formatting
Fixed scrolling text speed scaling with display resolution
Fixes for skin reloading for skin developers
Improved HDR profile support
Added skin setting for showing original/localised movie titles
Python
Upgraded to Python 3.14.6
Fixed addVideoStream(), addAudioStream() and addSubtileStream()
Platforms
Android
Fixed crash when using voice recognition
Fixed general app failures due to JNI exception
Fixed crash when starting Zeroconf browser
Fixed error when running "Library > Clean library" in settings
Linux (general)
Increased support for remote keys
Embedded Linux (DRM, GBM, and GLES)
Substantial rewrite of Linux rendering
Brings GLES to feature parity with GL
Added full HDR end-to-end support (decode, colorimetry, tonemapped GUI, and 10-bit output)
Added 12-bit decoding support
Added dithering and HQ scalers for GLES
Added "auto" dithering mode (GLES-only)
Added YUV 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 support
Added VAAPI hardware decoding of HEVC 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 (GLES-only)
Improved video performance
Improved GUI appearance in HDR mode
Expanded hardware support, especially for ARM devices
Fixed BT.2020 colorimetry signalling for DP-HDMI dongles
Fixed numerous "limited-range" video black-level issues
webOS
Fixed screensaver enabling during playback on webOS 4
Fixed playback on webOS 26
Fixed forced aspect ratio playback
tvOS
Improved Siri Remote playback controls
Developers
Fixed build failure with Visual Studio 2026 18.6.0 (May 2026 Update)
Change minimum required FFmpeg version from 8.1.0 to 8.1.1
Warning for case-sensitive filesystem users: a filename was corrected, and may cause git errors
Known issues
On some GBM/GLES platforms, fullscreen video may show stale or flickering overlay graphics

Kodi 22 "Piers" Alpha 3
Developer, Prerelease

Team Kodi

April 01, 2026
·
3 min read
Announcing the release of Kodi 22 "Piers" Alpha 3!

Usual words - the step from 21 to 22 is a major release, but it's also an Alpha at this stage, so you're going to get some bugs as well as funky new features. That is, of course, a major part of the point of early release software: please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any regressions you wonderful testers come across.

Okay, what's new in this version?

Changelog
Release highlights
Added support for taglines in TV shows
Added support for H264 AVCC subtitles
Added support for full IANA language tags
Added JSON RPC methods "Player.GetChapters" and "Player.OnPropertyChanged"
Upgraded FFmpeg to v8.0.1
Upgraded Python to v3.14.3
Changed MySQL/MariaDB charset to utf8mb4 and collation to general_ci (case insensitive)
Video
Improved Blu-ray support for both menus and playback
Improved TV show episode handling for blu-ray
Improved changing chapters in movies
Improved seeking during tempo change
Audio
Changed default samplerate from 44.1kHz to 48kHz
Fixed missing 200ms of audio at the start of video playback
Fixed occasional missing audio when changing playback speed
Fixed AC3 audio duration being incorrect for non-48KHz content
Improved handling of low-latency audio
Subtitles
Fixed handling of WebVTT (ISOBMFF) subtitles
Fixed PGS/VobSub subtitle selection for foreign audio tracks
Fixed crash when handling some BCP47 language tags added in Alpha 2
Library
Improved tagline handling for movies and TV shows
Games
Added N64 support using software rendering
Improved shader support
Fixed Black screen for games with unaligned textures
Fixed crash when changing resolution
Streaming and network
Fixed playback of tcp:// streams
Fixed media info display for strm:// streams
Fixed occasional errors resuming UPnP playback
Stacks and compressed archives
Added support for folder stacks, useful for DVD/Bluray folders
Improved playback of folder stacks
Improved handling media inside compressed archives
Fixed handling of zip files greater than 4GB
Profiles
Improved creating profiles in custom folders
Fixed deadlock when viewing Weather with multiple profiles
Highlighted current profile in profile selection dialog
Platforms
Android
Fixed Auto Frame Rate (AFR) when resuming from standby
Improved handling of Dolby Vision L5 metadata
Improved handling of foreign subtitles
webOS Video
General improvements for Dolby Vision support
Improved handling of Dolby Vision L5 metadata
Fixed tempo control
webOS Audio
Improved audio passthrough support
Improved volume handling in non-passthrough mode
Improved Dolby Digital audio when using eARC
Fixed AAC playback on some older versions of webOS
Windows
Added front-to-back rendering
Changed default audio output to XAUDIO and WASAPI
Fixed Kodi unable to run on Windows 8.1
Linux
Improved power management for systems without logind
Extended range of keyboard keys and remote buttons
Fixed long-pressing keyboard keys on Wayland
FreeBSD
Extract to disk instead of RAM for large compressed archives
A little love for developers and security researchers
(For researchers) Dropped some unused code that kept tripping CVEs
(For developers) New KodiAI app on GitHub
(For developers) Added support for Visual Studio 2026
(For developers) Improved compatibility with C++23
(For developers) Added meson support for building dependencies
Known Issues
Kodi is incompatible with MySQL 9.6 ('sets' is now a reserved keyword). A fix will be devised for the next v22 prerelease.
Blu-ray stream details aren't saved in the library

Kodi 22 "Piers" Alpha 2
Prerelease, Developer
Team Kodi
December 19, 2025

It is the season for giving, so, for those who want the latest and greatest, this is for you: hot on the heels of Kodi 22 "Piers" Alpha 1 (and Kodi 21.3 "Omega"), we present the perhaps predictably-titled Alpha 2.

Usual words - the step from 21 to 22 is a major release, but it's also an Alpha at this stage, so you're going to get some bugs as well as funky new features. That is, of course, a major part of the point of early release software: please raise GitHub issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any regressions you wonderful testers come across.

Okay, what's new in this version?

Video/audio
Upgraded to FFmpeg 8
Added HEIF/HEIC support
Fixed playing streams with more than 256 audio+video+subtitles tracks
Improved audio channel handling
Improved subtitle selection for "forced_only" su...