Ikea goes all-in with Matter, and that’s great for Matter

Like many smart home manufacturers, Ikea took its time warning up to Matter, the new standard that aims to unite the big smart home ecosystems. 

When it introduced its new Dirigera smart hub back in 2022, Ikea promised that it would support Matter within a matter of months. Months did indeed pass, then more months. More than a year later, Ikea confirmed what was already obvious: it was delaying the Dirgera’s Matter update, as the company needed “more development time to secure good functionality.” 

Then several more months passed, until Ikea finally released the Dirigera’s Matter update into beta testing—and even then, the Dirigera’s Matter support only went as far as bridging Ikea’s smart products into existing Matter networks. 

But in recent weeks, there were hints that Ikea was finally getting serious about Matter. While Ikea’s Matter support was initially limited to Matter-over-Wi-Fi, a few leaked products suggested that Ikea might embrace Thread, the low-power, mesh-networking wireless protocol that underpins the Matter standard. 

Then, late last week, the other shoe dropped: Ikea released an update for the Dirigera that turned the hub not just into a full-on Matter controller, but also a Thread border router, capable of discovering and taking charge of Thread-enabled Matter devices as well as connecting them to the internet. 

Now Ikea says it’s all-in with Matter, promising to unveil a whopping 20 new Matter devices in January 2026. 

“Until now, smart home technology hasn’t been easy enough to use for most people — or affordable enough for many to consider,” said David Granath, Range Manager at IKEA of Sweden, in a press release. “Bringing Matter to our products means we are taking a big step in the right direction, offering compatibility across brands, and lowering the threshold for people to get started.” 

Ikea is pretty much betting the farm on Matter as far as its smart-home ambitions are concerned, and that represents a massive vote of confidence for Matter. 

The Matter standard could certainly use a shot in the arm. First launched in late 2022 after a few delays, Matter arrived with the promise of making the big smart home ecosystems—Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings—play nice with each other. 

But Matter faced headwinds from the get-go, including uneven support from smart home manufacturers, a messy onboarding process for consumers, and the fact that many key smart home categories hadn’t been added to the Matter specification yet. Even now, security cameras still aren’t part of the Matter standard (although I’m told that may change soon). 

The Matter working group has since released several updates to the specification that have addressed the biggest pain points: a broader range of smart-home categories, an enhanced multi-admin process that connected Matter devices to multiple smart home platforms automatically, better energy efficiency for battery-powered Matter products, and so on. 

Those are positive developments, but Ikea’s full-throated support for Matter gives the standard even more momentum—and with any luck, more smart-home product manufacturers will follow suit.