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 v