October 01, 2026 | Press Release | MVTec, HALCON
With HALCON 26.11, MVTec continues its established six-month release cycle, expanding the software’s range of technologies and reinforcing its ambition to be a technologically leading standard software for machine vision.
“A standard software solution must cover a wide variety of requirements while continuously opening up new technological possibilities for industrial applications. This is precisely one of HALCON’s key strengths: Our customers can access a broad range of powerful, state-of-the-art machine vision technologies within a single software solution. The new version feeds right into that: From AI-based object detection and further advances in shape matching to 3D machine vision, we have systematically enhanced HALCON’s technological foundation,” explains Jan Gärtner, Product Manager HALCON at MVTec. To improve cybersecurity and meet the requirements of future-proof standard software, HALCON 26.11 includes defined processes for security updates as well as transparent information about the software components it contains. As scheduled, HALCON 26.11 is being released in both the Progress and Steady Editions. The Steady Edition has a two-year release cycle, whereas the Progress Edition is released every six months, so it always includes the latest technologies and features.
Automatic contour optimization in HALCON 26.11 now supports slightly deformable objects, allowing local shape variations to be compensated during model creation. This reduces manual contour editing and enables more robust shape matching in applications with production tolerances, perspective effects, or minor deformations.
HALCON 26.11 expands its AI object detection with oriented bounding boxes and per-class confidence thresholds for more precise and configurable object detection. The new ONNX Runtime AI² interface also enables more efficient deep learning inference on Linux-based edge devices using the 64-bit Arm architecture.
HALCON 26.11 makes 3D processing more reliable when objects are only partially visible or measurement data contains noise. Known object properties such as size or orientation can now be considered when fitting geometric shapes, while further enhancements simplify line-plane intersections and improve the handling of XYZ-mapped 3D data and surface-normal calculation.
HALCON 26.11 strengthens vulnerability-handling and security-update processes and complements the Software Bills of Materials already provided for HALCON. This gives manufacturers greater transparency into software components and supports them in addressing EU Cyber Resilience Act requirements.
With HALCON 26.11, HDevelopEVO becomes available as an Early-Adopter version for customers who want to explore the latest development capabilities at an early stage. New features include a new MCP server that is integrated by default and gives the AI assistant access to broader HALCON-specific knowledge, multithreading support in the HALCON Script Engine, and Runtime Graphics Windows. HDevelopEVO will continue to expand, with a particular focus on AI-agent-assisted software development and additional core functionality.
Jan Gärtner, Product Manager HALCON at MVTec (.jpg)
HALCON 26.11 Automatic Contour Optimization (.png)
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