Ubiquiti started hosting the UniFi World Conference a few years ago, and it gives enthusiasts, MSPs and system integrators the rare chance to see what the company is working on and speak to employees. This was quite unusual, as in the past, Ubiquiti has been somewhat reserved and maybe, secretive at times. It was never clear what it was really working on, which was important to know, not only from an inquisitive consumer point of view, but also for the MSP. As an MSP, knowing where a vendor is headed means you can confidently plan saround those new products and services.

I must stress that I can't go into great detail here as to what Ubiquiti previewed in terms of software and hardware unfortunately. While no NDA was signed with Ubiquiti, they have polity asked that nothing gets published online, which is fair enough. If the past few years are anything to go by, the timeline for the releases to happen could commence in the next few days, weeks or in some cases, around a year. For example, the new line of AV Switches that was announced recently was previewed at UWC 2025 and we have only just started to see the results of that.

Venue

The 2026 UWC event in London was actually the company's third time hosting it in the UK, with the inaugural one being in a hotel near Trafalgar Square. I attended this one in 2024, and it was quite a good event.

The second one last year was inside Battersea Park at the Evolution London events centre, just a short walk from Battersea Power Station, which itself is a new, sleek and modern shopping centre, which Apple has also chosen as a head office for the UK.

This venue was inevitably deemed quite suitable by Ubiquiti, as for 2026 this is where we find ourselves again. This year, around 1,100 people were in attendance, with some people I spoke to having flown in from as far as Portugal and Eastern Europe. In the days after the event this week, Ubiquiti has also hosted events in Paris and Munich - with Taiwan to follow.

Naturally, Ubiquiti had to use its own UniFi Access software and hardware for attendees to scan in and print off a sticky label for the lanyards. Entry into the event was handled via a QR code on Apple Wallet, that was sent ahead of time.

New Hardware

While the new and upcoming hardware and software that was previewed in the presentations are not anything I can mention here, there are some new devices I can highlight. The event hall itself was split into two, with a 'networking' room with tea, coffee and space to network with other visitors. Split off from that, was the main presentation centre.

In the networking room (pun intended), Ubiquiti were fine, and just like last year, people could take photos and videos with the new devices. Unless I missed anything, there were seven new products in total, with a varying degree of available technical specifications.

On show was the UDM Beast, UNVR Gen 2 Pro, Whole Home WiFi 7, UniFi 5G Backup, EFG Core, ECS Core and the UMR 5G.

The UDM Beast is the only one in this list that has had a degree of information available about it beforehand, with Ubiquiti having it on display at the event (FIND OUT NAME) in Las Vegas. Ubiquiti calls it a "Professional-grade 25G Cloud Gateway with full UniFi application support, integrated 10G switch and two 3.5° NVR drive Days."

The UDM Beast has two hard drive bays for UniFi Talk, UniFi Protect and the other applications that need storage as well as ten 10G ethernet ports and four SFP ports.

Next is the UNVR Gen 2 Pro, which itself is quite a distinctive looking device. It has rounded corners and sleeker fan inlets. This has eight hard drive bays, no LCM screen and one or two important features. At UWC 2025, Ubiquiti mentioned that a lot of the next generation NVR devices it would be releasing would have AI features built in, essentially baking in an AI Key into the NVR to offload those computational tasks, like LLM search and more.

This Gen2 model also features and integrated ViewPort, like we have seen with the UNVR Instant, making rip and replace installations from legacy systems, that little bit smoother.

Whole Home WiFi 7 looks to potentially make UniFi more accessible for the home use, which from the outside looks like a bundled three pack of UniFi Express 7 devices. At this stage it is unclear if Ubiquiti is using dedicated hardware for the mesh nodes, or if they are simply three UX7 units.

Looking to replace the LTE Backup device, Ubiquiti had a new UniFi 5G Backup device, which will work in the same manner. Plug it in to any PoE port on the network and it'll tunnel back to the gateway to provide an additional WAN connection. Quite a small and compact device with various mounting options.

Stepping up from the current EFG, which is also available as a UXG Enterprise - for support with HostiFi is the new EFG Core. Ubiquiti calls this a "Enterprise-grade 100Gbps UniFi Cloud Gateway with SD-WAN support, multi-WAN, high availability, and advanced security features"

This has ten ethernet ports, with unconfirmed port speeds, four SFP ports and what looks like four 25G SFP ports.

Transparency & Tone

As I touched on earlier, Ubiquiti in the past hasn't been a massively public company. While I can't share specifics unfortunately, it is very clear that the company is embracing feedback and taking that on board, which is excellent news.

If these UWV events are anything to go by, the company is certainly keen to take feedback onboard and make the changes needed to hardware and software to satisfy customers.