MathWorks, the leading developer of mathematical computing software, today announced Release 2026b (R2026b) of MATLAB® and Simulink®, introducing new products and major enhancements that enable engineering teams to manage increasing system complexity while accelerating the path from design and simulation to deployment. The release adds Simulink Variant Manager, Visual Inspection Toolbox, and Polyspace® Test Server while also expanding capabilities across aerospace, embedded systems, artificial intelligence, perception, audio engineering, and statistical analysis.
As modern engineered systems increasingly combine software, electronics, and AI, engineering teams face growing challenges in managing variants, validating designs, and deploying solutions at scale. R2026b addresses these challenges with new capabilities for configuration management, visual inspection, automated testing, and system verification.
Simulink Variant Manager helps organizations manage growing numbers of product variants across complex models and system architectures. By improving consistency, traceability, and collaboration throughout development, teams can more efficiently develop product families and platform-based designs.
Visual Inspection Toolbox combines artificial intelligence and image-processing techniques to streamline the development and deployment of visual inspection applications for manufacturing and industrial environments. In addition, the new Point Cloud Toolbox expands workflows for lidar-, camera-, radar-, and SLAM-based applications, supporting the development of advanced perception systems for robotics, automation, transportation, and other sensor-driven applications.
Polyspace Test Server improves software quality by automating testing and code coverage analysis for C/C++ embedded software in continuous integration environments. Teams can execute unit and integration tests and perform structural coverage analysis on automation servers, supporting compliance and reducing manual verification effort.
“Engineering organizations are being challenged to deliver increasingly sophisticated products that blend software, AI, electronics, and connected systems while maintaining quality, compliance, and development speed,” explains Avinash Nehemiah, Head of Product Management and Marketing – Design Automation, MathWorks. “R2026b helps teams connect design, simulation, testing, and deployment workflows so they can spend less time managing complexity and move from concept to production more quickly.”
In addition, R2026b includes significant updates across MATLAB and Simulink tools for advanced modeling, software verification, and hardware implementation workflows, including:
- MATLAB — Improves project management, source-control workflows, interoperability, and data access with new TOML-based project files, package management through File Exchange, Google Sheets integration, and performance improvements for data-centric workflows.
- Simulink — Enhances simulation performance and collaboration with published models that can be reused without rebuilding, JSON-based data dictionaries for source-control workflows, and AI-assisted profiling insights generated with Simulink Copilot.
- Aerospace Toolbox — Expands mission design and analysis workflows with high-fidelity orbit propagation, maneuver modeling, constellation design, and support for lunar missions and other celestial bodies.
- Aerospace Blockset — Enhances modeling and simulation of aircraft, rotorcraft, and spacecraft with capabilities for guidance, navigation, and control, mission planning, and system-level performance analysis.
- Audio Toolbox — Expands support for modeling, simulating, and evaluating complete acoustic systems with Simscape integration, ray-based sound propagation for room and underwater acoustics, and objective audio quality and intelligibility metrics.
- Deep Learning Toolbox — Simplifies time-series AI workflows with the new Time Series Modeler app and strengthens interoperability by enabling co-execution of PyTorch models in MATLAB and Simulink.
- Simulink Design Verifier — Accelerates verification workflows through distributed analysis across multiple CPU cores and improves precision for models that use floating-point and complex mathematical operations.
- SoC Blockset (for AMD) — Strengthens hardware-software co-design for AMD Adaptive SoCs and FPGAs, streamlining the design, deployment, and verification of communications, vision, deep learning, and control applications through reference and custom workflows.
- Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox — Adds interactive applications for design of experiments (DOE) and Gage R&R studies, making it easier to evaluate measurement-system variability and analyze experimental results.
For information on all the new products, enhancements, and bug fixes in the MATLAB and Simulink product families, visit MATLAB and Simulink Release Highlights.
Key Questions About MATLAB and Simulink R2026b
How does Release 2026b of MATLAB and Simulink address growing complexity in engineered systems?
Modern engineered systems increasingly combine software, AI, electronics, sensors, and connectivity. MATLAB and Simulink R2026b introduces new capabilities for variant management, AI-powered inspection and perception, and automated software verification to help organizations manage this growing complexity.
What are the most significant new products in MATLAB and Simulink R2026b?
New products include Simulink Variant Manager for managing product variants, Visual Inspection Toolbox for AI-powered visual inspection applications, and Polyspace Test Server for automated software testing and code coverage analysis.
How does the release improve software quality?
Polyspace Test Server automates testing and code coverage analysis for C/C++ embedded software in continuous integration environments. It supports unit testing, integration testing, and structural coverage analysis while reducing manual verification effort.
How does Release 2026b support AI-powered perception applications?
Visual Inspection Toolbox combines artificial intelligence and image-processing techniques for visual inspection applications. Point Cloud Toolbox expands support for lidar-, camera-, radar-, and SLAM-based workflows used in robotics, automation, transportation, and other sensor-driven applications.
MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software for designing engineered systems. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming and numeric computation environment for algorithm development, data analysis, and visualization. Simulink is a block diagram environment for simulation and Model-Based Design of multidomain and embedded systems. MATLAB and Simulink provide a unified computing platform that empowers engineering teams to model, simulate, and deploy complex engineered systems spanning industries such as automotive, aerospace, energy, and medical devices. MATLAB and Simulink are fundamental teaching and research tools at the world's top universities and learning institutions. Founded in 1984, MathWorks employs more than 6,500 people in 34 offices globally, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, USA. Visit www.mathworks.com.
MATLAB and Simulink are registered trademarks of The MathWorks, Inc. See mathworks.com/trademarks for a list of additional trademarks. Other product or brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
