Komplete 26: NI switches to year names and brings Absynth back, weeks before the company was split up

Native Instruments released Komplete 26 on 5 May 2026. The name skips ten numbers: the previous bundle was Komplete 15, from September 2024, and NI now uses the year as the model number. Three days later, inMusic announced it would buy NI. That makes Komplete 26 the last big release of the old company, and it shipped just before NI was sold in two pieces.

What's in it and what does it cost?

NI's own page lists four tiers. The three Select editions (Band, Beats and Electronic) cost $99 each, according to MusicRadar. NI lists Standard at $549 with more than 170 products, Ultimate at $1,249 with more than 270, and Collector's Edition at $1,949 with more than 330. NI's own page says it added more than 30, 50 and 60 new products to those three tiers respectively.

Compare that with launch pricing for Komplete 15, which MusicTech listed at $599, $1,199 and $1,799. Standard is $50 cheaper, Ultimate is $50 more and Collector's Edition is $150 more. Synthanatomy reports that updates from Komplete 15 onward now cost $149, $299 and $399, which it says is €50 to €100 less than before. So if you already own Komplete, this release costs you less than the last one did. For new buyers, the top tiers cost more.

Synthanatomy also points out that none of the new content was announced for the first time with the bundle. Everything new to Komplete 26 had already been announced as a separate product. This version gathers existing products into the bundle rather than launching new ones.

Is Absynth really back?

Yes, in the bundle. Sound On Sound reported that NI retired Absynth from Komplete in 2022, mainly because keeping it running on modern systems had become difficult. Absynth 6 was released on its own in December 2025. NI built it with Brian Clevinger, the synth's original creator. Sound On Sound lists a hybrid engine that combines granular, FM, wavetable and subtractive synthesis, the old 68-point envelopes, MPE and poly aftertouch, MTS-ESP microtuning, surround spatialisation, and a Preset Explorer that maps patches by timbre. It includes vintage factory patches going back to Absynth 1 and loads your own presets from Absynth 4 and 5. On its own it costs $199, or $99 to upgrade from Absynth 2 to 5.

Komplete 26 puts it in Standard, Ultimate and Collector's Edition alongside Massive X, Kontakt 8 and Guitar Rig 7 Pro. If you make ambient, sound-design or film music and dropped out of the Komplete upgrade cycle when Absynth left, this is the strongest reason in years to come back.

Do you need the top tiers?

MusicRadar's review calls the bundle excellent value per plugin and still questions whether anyone needs all of it. It gives one specific reason to stop at Ultimate: Ultimate and Collector's Edition share the same 12 Session Guitarist titles and the same pianos, organs and drums. So if you mostly want sampled instruments, the extra $700 for Collector's Edition mainly buys extra Kontakt libraries such as Circular and Odes and extra Brainworx tools such as bx_masterdeck Pro and bx_console AMEK 200, per Synthanatomy.

Disk space is the other cost. MusicRadar's system requirements list 320GB for a full Standard install, 960GB for Ultimate and 1.6TB for Collector's Edition. MusicRadar also notes NI's subscription route, from $15 a month, for anyone who would rather rent the bundle than pay up front.

What happened to NI after the release?

The sale did not keep NI in one piece. The German insolvency administrator's firm, GÖRG, said on 3 July that the group's businesses were sold with effect from 1 July. inMusic took NI's German, UK and Hong Kong operating companies and one of its two US companies. iZotope went to Artel Software, part of Boris FX. Boris FX's own announcement says its deal ran alongside inMusic's purchase of NI, which it says completed on 30 June.

Both buyers have made promises about continuity. inMusic CEO Jack O'Donnell said the tools customers rely on "will keep working". Boris FX says all iZotope products, licences and subscriptions remain fully active. Existing Komplete 26 licences, including the iZotope plugins in them, should therefore keep working. Neither company has said anything public about the bundle itself.

What we think

The year names are mostly cosmetic. The real news in Komplete 26 is where the bundle's value now sits. MusicRadar says every paid edition includes the Elements versions of iZotope's Ozone 12, Neutron 5 and Nectar 4, and Synthanatomy lists the iZotope titles among the new additions. NI presented Komplete 26 as one ecosystem. Less than two months later, the mixing and mastering part of it belonged to a company outside inMusic.

That has three consequences, and none of them has been confirmed yet. First, any future Komplete that includes iZotope plugins will need a licensing deal between inMusic and Boris FX, where until now it was an internal decision. Second, iZotope updates for bundle owners may follow a different roadmap from the rest of Komplete. Third, the discounted update prices that make Komplete 26 attractive to existing owners are cheap partly because they assume another bundle is coming. Whether that next bundle includes iZotope is now a commercial question, not an engineering one.

Who gains? inMusic gets Kontakt, Maschine and the rest of NI's instrument library, to sit alongside its own hardware brands. Boris FX gets a well-known audio brand. The people most exposed are producers whose workflow depends on one subscription or bundle covering both instruments and mixing tools. That was the point of buying Komplete instead of separate plugins.

Our advice: if you're on Komplete 15, the $149 Standard update is fair for Absynth 6 alone. Don't pay extra for Collector's Edition expecting the bundle to stay unified. Pay for what's in the box today. Ultimate covers most producers. Back up your installers and serial numbers, and keep a note of which of your Komplete plugins are iZotope products, so you know which company to contact if anything changes.