Every year or two, Native Instruments refreshes its flagship production bundle, and the update usually tells you something about where the wider industry is heading. Komplete 26, announced ahead of Superbooth 2026, is one of the clearer signals yet that MPE and polyphonic aftertouch support have moved from being a single instrument's headline feature to a baseline expectation across an entire software catalog.

What's New in the Bundle

Komplete 26 packages more than 190 instruments and effects and over 180,000 sounds, alongside mixing and mastering tools developed in partnership with iZotope and Brainworx. The bundle's marquee synthesis addition is a rebuilt Absynth 6, which returns as a three-channel semi-modular hybrid spanning subtractive, FM, wavetable, and granular synthesis — and, notably, ships with full MPE and polyphonic aftertouch support built into its redesigned engine rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

Alongside Absynth 6, the update includes a refreshed Kontakt 8.10, which brings aftertouch support to Native Instruments' flagship sampler engine — a meaningful addition for anyone using Kontakt-based instruments with an MPE controller or a polyphonic-aftertouch keyboard like the Korg Keystage or Native Instruments Kontrol S-Series.

Why a Bundle-Wide Update Matters More Than a Single Instrument Update

It's one thing for a single flagship synth to add MPE support as a differentiator. It's another for a company to treat expressive, per-note control as infrastructure that should run through its sampler engine, its semi-modular synth, and its broader software ecosystem simultaneously. That's effectively what Komplete 26 represents: rather than a single new instrument built around MPE, it's an entire production suite being quietly retrofitted so that expression data flows through it consistently, regardless of which instrument in the bundle a musician reaches for.

For working musicians, that consistency has real practical value. A composer who builds a template combining Kontakt sample libraries, Absynth pads, and other Komplete instruments no longer has to remember which specific plugin in their chain will actually respond to an MPE controller's pitch bend or pressure data and which will silently ignore it. As more of the bundle standardizes on the same expressive vocabulary, MPE controllers like the Expressive E Osmose or ROLI Seaboard become more broadly usable across an entire session rather than reserved for one or two "MPE-ready" instruments.

The Bigger Pattern

Komplete 26's timing, arriving ahead of Superbooth 2026 alongside a wave of new expressive hardware announcements, fits a pattern that's been building across the software side of the industry for the past couple of years. Spectrasonics brought MPE to Omnisphere 3. UVI added it across Synth Anthology 5. u-he has continued refining MPE handling in Zebra 3. Each of these moved independently, but together they add up to a software landscape where not supporting MPE is now the exception a plugin has to explain, rather than the feature it gets to advertise.

That shift changes the calculus for anyone deciding whether an MPE controller is worth the investment. A few years ago, buying a Seaboard or an Osmose meant carefully checking which of your existing plugins would actually respond to it. Increasingly, the more relevant question is which of your plugins won't — and that list keeps getting shorter.

Availability

Komplete 26 is available now in Standard, Ultimate, and Collector's editions through Native Instruments, with existing Komplete subscribers getting access to the updated instrument set as part of their existing plans. For musicians building an MPE-centered studio, it's worth checking which specific instruments in the new bundle have been upgraded with expressive support versus which are along for the ride unchanged — the improvements are broad, but not universal across all 190-plus included tools.