As every Philips Hue user knows, the Hue Bridge is the essential centrepoint of the system, a control hub for your lights that connects to your router as well as joining Hue to smart home ecosystems such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa and Google Home.
But I think it looks very much like Hue wants to be one of those ecosystems itself. During an event at IFA 2025, Hue owner Signify set out its vision for the next step forward. “Smart lighting sits at the heart of what we do, but our vision for the smart home goes further,” says John Smith, leader of Hue at Signify.
Smith talked of “offerings that cover security, entertainment and wellbeing, increasingly tapping into the potential of artificial intelligence. Our goal is to make our users’ lives more intuitive, personalized, and connected – and to reimagine home itself.”
Central to this ideal is the new £80/$99 Hue Bridge Pro, which Hues says “lays the foundation for the next era of smart lighting control.” The new bridge supports up to 150 lights and 50 accessories and removes the need to have separate Hue Bridges in homes – everything can be controlled from a single Hue Bridge. It’s five times more powerful than the original Bridge and now enables users to store over 500 custom lighting scenes and get faster response times across the system.
It enables incoming capabilities such as Hue Motion Aware where you can turn on lights when motion is detected. You can easily upgrade from an existing Bridge (or Bridges).
Hue also debuted a video doorbell at the show and I think Hue has probably got its eye on being an alternative to Amazon’s Ring and Blink systems – after all, it already has some cameras. The Hue Secure video doorbell can do two-way talk as you’d expect, but it can also turn on lights when someone rings the bell or it detects motion. There’s also a chime.
And as part of this move Hue Secure video history will be free rather than part of the Hue Secure subscription. There will also be some new AI enhancements in 2026 including facial recognition while the cameras can also now recognise smoke alarm sounds.
And Hue is also introducing AI-based automations via its generative AI assistant tool, too.
As I’d expected there were also stacks of new Hue lights launched at the event, too, including new strip lights, an Essential range that brings the barrier to entry down and more Festavia lights in time for the Christmas period. The globe string lights are designed to be in place all year and can simply be changed to match the mood… or the time of year.
And that wasn’t all; Sonos and Hue also announced at IFA 2025 that Sonos users will be able to control their Philips Hue lights using Sonos Voice Control. I think many Sonos users would do this kind of thing using Amazon Alexa (including myself) but it gives a different option for those who want to use the more private Sonos assistant.
Indeed, Sonos says it “has been the most requested voice feature from our users, and a natural next step for Sonos Voice Control as we continue delivering hands-free ease to customers.”
You’ll be able to turn Hue lights on or off, adjust brightness or colour, or activate pre-set scenes.
