Philips Hue showed off some of the wildest smart lights I’ve ever seen at an event last night, following the first press day of IFA 2026. They include a bendy rope light that beams light around its entire circumference and three cylindrical fixtures, one of which is literally a pole you’re meant to lean on a wall, all announced today.
The Liane 360-degree rope light, which starts at a whopping $400, is a wobbly worm of a light that almost looks like flexible neon tubes. It’s very much meant to be something you would hang from a ceiling or along a wall, using clips to fix it so that it loops back on itself or appears to be in the middle of some kind of serpentine writhe.
The Liane displays remarkably smooth gradients and, as usual for Philips Hue, doesn’t put out obnoxiously saturated color. Everything looked natural, even when it was beaming a deep fuchsia. Philips Hue has already started selling the Liane 360-degree rope light on its website. If anyone has a spare $400 and wants to buy me one, just let me know.
Then there are the new Signe lights—the Signe Pendant, Signe Pendulum, and Signe Pole. All three are cylindrical, with a strip of colorful lighting on one side. The Pendant light is the one I’m adjusting in the picture above; it’s supported on either end by rings that are suspended from the ceiling by two cables. The rings let you adjust the light, rotating it to face downward, like if you have it lighting a table, or turned sideways or upward—maybe you want to light a piece of art or, uh, some cool ceiling tiles. I don’t know what you people do.
The Signe Pendant comes strung on a thicker cable that you can hang from the ceiling. It’s weighted at the bottom, and you can slide the pendulum up and down, fixing its height wherever you like. And the Signe Pole is, well, the pole that you lean on a wall. Both the Pendulum and Pole will start at $320 and go on sale in October. Philips Hue hasn’t announced pricing or availability for the Signe Pendant, but I’m sure you can bet on it costing more money than you’ll want to pay, too.
Outside of those, the new lighting from Hue seems a bit more like the company playing catch-up with competitors like Govee. There’s a new net light, a curtain light, and an icicle one. They’re all part of Hue’s Festavia line, and they’re named, well, Festavia Net, Festavia Curtain, and Festavia Icicle. They output vibrant colors with smooth motion effects and, of course, will work in concert with each other if you set them to display any of the scenes that can be found in the Philips Hue app. All are available today, and although they’re the cheapest lights I’ve written about here, they’re still not cheap at $250 apiece.
Speaking of the Hue app, the company has announced a new chatbot-interfaced AI assistant for the Hue app for a feature called Custom AI Behaviors. It’s a little like the Siri AI Shortcuts feature that’s coming in iOS 27—describe an automation to it using natural language, and it will create one for you.
A representative discussing them at the Hue event said the features unlock capabilities that don’t exist in the usual menu-based automations workflow. He listed as examples things like having your lights turn on in your backyard but only if the ambient light falls below a certain level, or having your living room lights dim when your TV turns on. And if an automation doesn’t do what you like, you can go back to edit it, although this wouldn’t mean tweaking the rules directly; instead, you would ask the AI chatbot to do it for you. Of course, it would need to work very well in practice for this not to be a feature most people abandon the first time it gets something wildly wrong.
The automation examples above are exactly the kind you’ll find in other ecosystems like Aqara or Apple Home, but he said Philips Hue avoids including them in its own system not because its hubs aren’t capable of it, but because it would make things too complicated for customers. I’ve always believed you should let the customer decide what’s too much, but I’m just a little old country tech reporter. What do I know? Custom AI Behaviors are coming as a free update to the Philips Hue Bridge Pro in October.
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