Introduction

Red Hat has released an official video overview of Ansible Automation Platform 2.6, the Q4 2025 release. This article accompanies the video with a summary of all major features and enhancements.

Watch the Video

View the official "What's new: Ansible Automation Platform 2.6" video from Red Hat for a complete walkthrough of new features.

Feature Highlights

Unlock More Value — Automation Dashboard

Monitor, measure, and report on the impact of your automation:

  • Real-time metrics — Job success rates, time savings, ROI
  • On-premise utility — Data stays within your environment
  • Export capabilities — PDF and CSV reports for stakeholders
  • Resource optimization — Visibility into direct and indirect nodes

Operate More Efficiently — Lightspeed Intelligent Assistant

A new AI-powered chat assistant embedded directly in the platform:

  • On-demand support — Get answers without leaving the UI
  • Faster troubleshooting — AI-guided problem resolution
  • Accelerated onboarding — New users get up to speed faster
  • Validated resources — Links to official documentation

Achieve New Levels of Scale — Self-Service Portal

Simplify automation service delivery for the entire organization:

  • Guided forms — Auto-generated from existing job templates
  • No Ansible knowledge required — Point-and-click interface
  • Admin control — Platform admins define what's available
  • Wider adoption — Extend automation to domain experts

Additional Enhancements

Event-Driven Ansible

  • External secret management (HashiCorp Vault)
  • Editable project URLs
  • EDA-triggered job labels
  • Enhanced Kafka support with wildcards

Refreshed UI

  • Cleaner, more modern design
  • Improved accessibility features
  • Better responsive behavior

AI-Assisted Inventory Generation (Developer Preview)

  • Describe your topology in natural language
  • Platform generates validated inventory files
  • Reduces manual errors and onboarding time

New Collections and Integrations

  • Networking: Arista, Cisco Meraki, Nautobot
  • Cloud: HashiCorp, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
  • Infrastructure: Windows Server, OpenShift Virtualization, VMware
  • AIOps: Red Hat AI, Splunk

Upgrade Information

  • Direct upgrade path from AAP 2.4 and 2.5
  • Important: AAP 2.6 is the last RPM-installable release
  • Plan your migration to containerized installation for AAP 2.7

Conclusion

AAP 2.6 delivers on three key promises: measuring automation value, AI-powered efficiency, and enterprise-wide scalability. Watch the official video for demos of each feature in action.

For more Ansible tutorials and guides, explore the [complete article collection](/articles) on Ansible Pilot.