Aqara is expanding its ever-growing line-up over at IFA 2026 in Berlin… but it’s not locks, cameras and sensors on show this time around.

The Chinese smart home specialist has unveiled a plethora of dynamic smart lights clearly aimed at tapping into compatriot Govee’s user-base.

While Govee has dominated the “Hue-alternative” smart lighting market in the past couple of years, it has traditionally relied on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Aqara’s response is a range of native Thread and Zigbee dual-protocol smart lights; an approach that mirrors its recent launches in other smart home areas such as the Multi-State Sensor P100 or the Spatial Multi-Sensor FP400, which were unveiled at CES in January .

All of the new devices announced by Aqara at the Berlin expo, ranging from permanent roofline lights to indoor floor lamps, support both wireless standards.

Buyers can opt for native Matter-over-Thread to hook the lights directly into Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, or Home Assistant without needing an Aqara hub.

Alternatively, users already invested in Aqara’s vast smart home ecosystem can go down the “native” Zigbee route to unlock power-user features, like natural-language voice prompts that trigger room-wide automated scenes.

Starting outside, Aqara introduced the Permanent Outdoor Lights H1. Designed for year-round roofline installation, the H1 features an IP65 weatherproof rating, cuttable and extendable runs, independently controllable RGBCW LEDs, and a 2000K to 9000K white range for everyday illumination.

Available in 50-foot, 100-foot, and 150-foot versions (30, 60, or 90 lights respectively), they can be extended or cut to fit different rooflines.

Joining it outside are the Outdoor String Lights H1, available in 15-bulb or 30-bulb lengths. These string lights feature multi-zone RGBIC effects and integrate Aqara’s AI-powered Gen-Scene generator, allowing you to talk or type a prompt to automatically build custom lighting scenes across connected zones.

Going inside, the Floor Lamp T1 stands 1,420 mm tall and uses a side-emitting optical design to wash walls in light.

Driven by a 16-bit, 5-channel chip with 18 individually addressable zones, it delivers up to 1,000 lumens alongside smooth color gradients.

For cabinets and shelves, the new LED Strip T2 packs 108 LEDs per meter and 18 addressable zones every 3 meters, boasting a high color rendering index, music sync capabilities, and up to 1,750 lumens.

Rounding out the hardware is the ultra-thin LED Downlight T2, designed for low-ceiling retrofits in 4-inch and 6-inch options with up to 1,200 lumens and built-in power-off memory.

By pushing Thread-over-Matter as a standard, Aqara avoids clogging home Wi-Fi networks with dozens of high-bandwidth smart bulbs while ensuring low-latency local execution. Thread smart lights also act as repeaters, helping users create a stronger mesh in their homes.

At the same time, retaining Zigbee support ensures compatibility for users running complex local automations with Aqara’s existing sensors, switches, and hubs.

I’ve got a wealth of Aqara tech in my house and it’s also very simple to mix and match both connectivity options and keep things “in house” in the Aqara app, as many of its hubs double up as Matter controllers - with Thread border router skills - too.

Aqara also used IFA 2026 to unveil Aqara Builder, a platform for creators, integrators, and developers to share real-world automation scripts, installation projects, and AI-assisted design ideas.

There’s no word on pricing or availability as of yet, but I’ll update this story when I get more info.