# Release notes

> The blog post on home-assistant.io that tells what is new in a release, what changed, and what users need to do about it.

Source: https://contributors.home-assistant.io/glossary/release-notes/

The release notes go live on the [Home Assistant blog](https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/categories/core/) on the day of the release. Next to the highlights, they have a section for every patch release, a section with the [backward-incompatible changes](https://contributors.home-assistant.io/glossary/backward-incompatible-change/), and a list of all changes.

The text about a backward-incompatible change comes from the description of its pull request. That is why the pull request template asks you to write it for users. See [Release notes and the release party](https://contributors.home-assistant.io/releases/guides/release-notes/).

## Related terms

- [Release](https://contributors.home-assistant.io/glossary/release/): A new version of Home Assistant. One comes out on the first Wednesday of every month, with patch releases in between.
- [Backward-incompatible change](https://contributors.home-assistant.io/glossary/backward-incompatible-change/): A change that requires users or developers to change something on their side, like their configuration or their custom integration.
- [Patch release](https://contributors.home-assistant.io/glossary/patch-release/): A smaller release with fixes, that comes out between the monthly releases, like 2026.10.1.
- [Beta](https://contributors.home-assistant.io/glossary/beta/): A test version of the next release, published a week before it, so people can find problems before everyone updates.