Home Assistant has had an alert card since the September frontend release, but it was built for the home and security dashboards and there was no way to add it from the UI. That changes in 2026.11. Aidan Timson (timmo001) wrote two pull requests that give the card a visual editor, put it in the card picker and add a matching badge. The first was merged on 18 October 2026 at 17:10 Polish time, the second on 19 October at 9:22. The documentation for both is already in the next branch of the website. Home Assistant 2026.11 is due in early November.
What the card shows
The alert card looks like a tile card with a coloured background that can pulse. Under the name it shows the state, when that state last changed and the entity's area, and tapping it opens the More info dialog. It works with four kinds of entities, and only certain states count as an alert:
| Entity | Alert states |
|---|---|
| Alarm control panel | triggered |
| Binary sensor | on |
| Cover | open |
| Lock | jammed, unlocked, open |
The alert colour, red by default, and the pulse only appear in those states. The rest of the time the card uses the new clear colour if you set one, or stays uncoloured with a grey icon. With reduced motion turned on in the system settings, the background now stays tinted instead of pulsing. Before this change it kept pulsing anyway. If you only want to see the card when something needs attention, the documentation suggests a visibility condition on the entity's state.
In the card picker, the alert card appears under "By card" and is suggested under "By entity" for alarm panels, binary sensors, covers and locks.
A breaking change if you wrote it in YAML
The pull request is labelled as a breaking change. The color option is now alert_color, the colour only shows during an alert, and the card supports only the four kinds of entities listed above. Without an alert_color the card turns red during an alert, and alert_color: none keeps it uncoloured. The home and security dashboards are not affected, but if you added the card to your own dashboard in YAML, you have to update it:
type: alert
entity: binary_sensor.front_door
clear_color: green
alert_color: deep-orange
pulse: true
The badge
The alert badge is the same idea in a smaller format: the entity's name and state over a coloured background that can pulse, with a tap opening More info. It has the same four settings as the card, and it appears in the badge picker under "By badge" and, for the same four domains, under "By entity". Other entities show a configuration error.
A third pull request, which adds name and icon overrides and tap, hold and double-tap actions to both the card and the badge, was still open on 19 October.