I’ve got a drawer full of dead smart home hubs at this stage. Every ecosystem wants its own little box plugged into the router, and most of them only ever talk to their own gear. It’s really why I went down the homelab route with Home Assistant. So a free update that turns an existing wall panel into a proper cross-brand controller is the kind of announcement that actually matters, rather than the usual IFA filler.
Shelly announced the update at IFA 2026 in Berlin, alongside an updated smart radiator thermostat and two new door and window sensors.
The headline piece is a free over-the-air firmware update, version 2.8.0, for the Shelly Wall Display range. It turns compatible Wall Displays into both a Matter controller and a Matter device at the same time, meaning the panel can pull in gear from other brands and also hand its own functions over to whatever smart home app you’re already using. No pricing changes here, since it’s a free update to hardware people already own.
What the Matter update actually does
As a controller, the Wall Display can add and manage Matter devices from other manufacturers directly, covering lights, blinds and shades, thermostats, fans, plugs and sensors, without needing a separate Matter hub or bridge sitting in the background. Those devices show up as tiles right next to your existing Shelly gear on the home screen, and they can be pulled into Shelly’s own scenes, automations and scripting, all running locally on the panel rather than round-tripping to the cloud.
It works the other way too. The same update lets the Wall Display act as a Matter device in its own right, so its relays, dimming and thermostat functions can be added to Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, SmartThings or Home Assistant, depending on how the panel is set up. A Wall Display can be part of more than one Matter ecosystem at once, so plugging it into Google Home doesn’t lock you out of also using it with Apple’s setup.
Which Wall Displays get it
Full controller and device functionality lands on the Wall Display X1i, X2i, XL, U1, S1, S2 and XT with firmware 2.8.0. The original Wall Display and the Wall Display X2 don’t get the full update, but they can still control Matter devices shared from a newer compatible Wall Display on the same network, so it’s not a total dead end for older hardware. One caveat worth knowing: if you’re dealing with Thread-based Matter devices rather than Wi-Fi or Zigbee ones, you’ll still need a separate Thread Border Router. The Wall Display doesn’t remove that requirement.
A quieter BLU TRV with a new gateway trick
Shelly is also updating the BLU TRV, its smart radiator valve, with a new motor for quieter operation and a claimed battery life of up to two years. The more useful change is on the setup side. Until now, BLU TRV only worked with the bundled USB Gateway Gen3, an extra box you had to plug in alongside it. The update adds a gateway function to compatible Shelly Wi-Fi devices from the Plus generation onwards, so if you’ve already got one of those running through Shelly Cloud, you don’t need the dedicated gateway at all. Shelly Gateway Gen3 still exists as an option where you want local as well as cloud control. The TRV supports both Bluetooth and Zigbee.
Two new door and window sensors
Rounding out the announcement are two additions to the BLU ZB sensor family. The Shelly BLU Door Window Mini ZB is a smaller sensor built for narrow window and door frames where the standard version is too bulky to fit properly. The Shelly BLU Door Window Outdoor ZB carries IP55 weather protection and is aimed at garden gates, sheds and other outbuildings, extending the same open and closed monitoring outside the main house. Both support Bluetooth and Zigbee connectivity.
The Matter update ships as a free firmware update for eligible Wall Displays. The updated BLU TRV, the BLU Door Window Mini ZB and the BLU Door Window Outdoor ZB are all listed as coming soon, with no pricing confirmed yet. Worth keeping an eye on Shelly’s own site for exact dates once they land.
