Key Takeaways:
- The LoRa Alliance’s 2026–2028 roadmap aims to make LoRaWAN easier to deploy and integrate by adding application support, device migration tools, and stronger plug-and-play features.
- New coverage extensions, security updates, gateway certification, and standardized interfaces are designed to expand LoRaWAN’s reach and support broader IoT adoption worldwide.
The LoRa Alliance has announced its technical roadmap outlining a three year plan for how it will support new LoRaWAN application integrations, extensions, and other enhancements.
The LoRa Alliance is an open, nonprofit association that develops and promotes the LoRaWAN standard and product certification program. With the highest accessibility, most robust ecosystem, and widest global adoption of any LPWAN technology, LoRaWAN has quickly become a fourth pillar of wireless connectivity, complementing cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
The LoRa Alliance’s technical roadmap is designed to leverage these strengths and build upon them with the latest specifications that will accelerate new application domain integrations, make deployments more plug-and-play, and accelerate LoRaWAN coverage extensions.
What is the Goal of the LoRa Alliance Roadmap
Alper Yegin, CEO of the LoRa Alliance, commented that the new roadmap aims to support the next generation of IoT devices and applications due to come online in the next few years by leveraging and augmenting what has made LoRaWAN an essential communications technology.
“For LoRaWAN adoption growth to continue, we need to expand integrations with existing IoT application domains and make things easier for users by enabling their implementations to become truly plug-and-play,” said Yegin. “In addition, new coverage extensions will help make LoRaWAN ubiquitously available.”
Application Integrations
This year marks the start of the roadmap, focused on expanding LoRaWAN’s capabilities and ecosystem. These include the previously announced effort to develop a mapping structure between LoRaWAN and the Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA), a smart industry applications standard. Another upcoming application integration will allow IoT-connected water meters using the North American UI-1203 protocol to more seamlessly leverage LoRaWAN.
The LoRa Alliance’s new roadmap includes plug-and-play enhancements to be addressed this year and next. In 2026, these enhancements will include new features for supporting migration of IoT-connected devices from one network to another. Device migration procedures represent an important aspect of device lifecycle management, and these features will make it easier for a fleet of devices to move among different LoRaWAN networks.
Coming in 2028, a Standard Application Data Format will standardize application codec payload structure, making it easier for any device to work with any application platform without custom integration.
Also, an End-Device Capabilities Discovery feature will improve on manual provisioning of LoRaWAN devices by enabling a network server to download device capabilities from external servers.
Plans for 2027
Planned for next year, newer plug-and-play enhancements will be released by the LoRa Alliance as the roadmap progress continues. These include Zero-Touch Device Onboarding Enhancements, which aims to make end-device onboarding get closer to a truly plug-and-play experience. Additionally, arriving next year will be DNS-based Network Infra Discovery, which will reduce the need for pre-configuring core network infrastructure elements, such as network servers, application servers, and join servers to enable interconnections among them.
In addition, the LoRa Alliance plans to release two new network server interface features in 2027. The first will be the Network Server to Gateway Interface, which will seek to standardize the API between the network servers and the LoRaWAN gateways, so any gateway can be used with any network server without requiring additional software development or integration.
The second will be the Network Server to Application Server Interface, which will be designed to standardize the API between the network servers and the application servers. This will mean that any application server can be used with any network server without requiring additional software development or integration.
Accelerating Coverage Extensions
Finally, within the new technical roadmap the LoRa Alliance is stepping up the release of new extensions that will help broaden and deepen LoRaWAN’s reach in the next few years. They include:
- In 2026, a new extension called Walk-By/Drive-By Reading will enable LoRaWAN devices to efficiently connect to mobile base stations that might be mounted on vehicles, flown on drones, or carried by hand. An extension called Satellite Discovery Enhancements will standardize how fully commercial-off-the-shelf end-devices discover LoRaWAN satellite constellations, building on the existing capability for LoRaWAN end-devices to use LEO and GEO satellites.
- In 2027, the LoRa Alliance will add a Crypto Agility extension to its end-to-end security mechanism, introducing the ability to support any future crypto suite between the end-devices, the network servers, and the application servers. Additionally, the alliance will build on its existing LoRaWAN end-device certification program with a LoRaWAN Gateway Certification program, increasing the group’s ability to accelerate the advancement of LoRaWAN as an essential global connectivity technology.
- In 2028 will witness the arrival of a new Network Analytics API, which will standardize how traffic patterns can be observed and analyzed for network management purposes.