Version 5.0 released : Node-RED

📆 Last chance! Join 1.5K+ makers & pros for a full day of Node-RED talks · Hobby → Production · Free "

-->

Node-RED

home

about

blog

documentation

forum

flows

github

blog

• version-5-0-released

Version 5.0 released

09 June 2026 • Nick O'Leary

Node-RED 5.0 is now available to install. If upgrading, please read the upgrade instructions.

Node-RED 5.0 is the biggest change to the editor experience in the history of the project. Back in our roadmap post we set out four areas of focus - modernising the UX, improving node appearance, targeted functional enhancements, and updating our project infrastructure. After a long run of beta releases - and a huge amount of community feedback along the way - we’re delighted to bring it all together in the final release.

We’ve highlighted the main changes below. As always, there have also been a large number of community contributions ranging from bug fixes, features, documentation and translations. We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without these contributions - a big thank you to everyone involved.

The Change Log has the full list of changes in this release.

A modernised editor

Redesigned sidebars

The Explorer and Information sidebars

Built-in Dark theme

Accessibility improvements

Updated selection appearance

Updated pan and zoom

Node documentation

GitHub-style alerts in Markdown

Other editor updates

Functional enhancements

Pausing debug output

Calling Link nodes from the Function node

Sorted node selection lists

Delay node burst mode

Node and security updates

More TLS options

Hardened authentication

Other updates

Under the hood

Node.js 24

Bundling npm

Modernised developer setup

Full Changelog

Community

A modernised editor

The general look and feel of the editor hadn’t changed substantially in a long time. With 5.0 we’ve taken the opportunity to step back and rethink how the editor is laid out, with a focus on better information flow, more flexible use of space, and improved accessibility.

This was a big, iterative piece of work, refined through the beta releases in response to community feedback. The result is an editor that should feel familiar, but makes far better use of the space available to you.

The modernised Node-RED 5 editor

Redesigned sidebars

Previously the sidebars were a catch-all space on the right-hand side, with the available panels hidden behind a hard-to-discover drop-down menu. Both sides of the editor now share the same, more discoverable sidebar behaviour.

The biggest change is that you can now show two panels at a time by splitting a sidebar vertically. This means you can, for example, keep the Debug panel visible in the lower section while working with another panel above it - a long-requested capability.

You can rearrange panels by dragging them directly between the available positions. Each panel has a small header showing its name that you can grab to move it around the editor - to either side, or into the upper or lower section of a side.

Along the bottom are the sidebar buttons, grouped by sidebar section, and toggle buttons to open and close the sidebars in a single click.

Sidebar toolbar

The Explorer and Information sidebars

The old Info sidebar has been split into two distinct panels:

The Explorer lets you navigate your flows and nodes. In our left-to-right reading convention it’s far more natural to have this overview on the left, so it’s now the default panel in the top-left sidebar section.

The Information panel shows details on whatever you currently have selected, and is the default panel shown in the top-right.

The Explorer and Information sidebar panels

Built-in Dark theme

Node-RED finally has a built-in Dark theme . The editor automatically picks the light or dark theme based on your browser/OS preference, and you can explicitly choose one in the User Settings dialog.

Node-RED 5 dark mode theme

Alongside this, we’ve added a mechanism for theme plugins to provide multiple variants - so a third-party theme can now ship both a light and dark variant in a single package, and have the editor switch between them automatically.

Accessibility improvements

Improved accessibility has been a recurring theme throughout this work. We’ve started applying appropriate ARIA attributes across the editor, the dropdown menus are more touch-accessible and scroll when there isn’t enough vertical space, and the theme has had a number of contrast and accessibility refinements. There’s always more to do here, but Google Lighthouse is much happier with us than it was before.

Updated selection appearance

As part of the accessibility improvements, selected nodes now show as a blue halo around the node, rather than just changing the node’s border. This makes it much easier to spot what’s selected, and clashes far less with the colour of the node body.

Node selection

Updated pan and zoom

We’ve updated various pan/zoom interactions withe workspace to...