Safety Light Curtains in 2026 — What Actually Changed in Standards, Technology and Buying

I get asked some version of “what's new this year?” every time a customer is about to commit to a curtain for a ten-year line. The honest answer for 2026 is that the sensor on the bracket is almost the same one we shipped in 2022. What moved is the regulatory envelope around it and the data cable behind it. Both matter for a buying decision — just not in the way the trade-show banners imply.

Here is the short list of things that genuinely changed, ranked by how much they should affect a purchase order this year.

What is the EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230, and why does it matter now?

This is the headline. Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 was adopted in 2023 with a 42-month transition, and it applies from 20 January 2027, replacing Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC. The word “regulation” is the point: unlike the old Directive, it applies directly in every EU and EFTA member state without national transposition, so the legal text is the same in Munich, Milan and Madrid. If you build machines for the European market, 2026 is your last full year to re-base technical files on the new text.

Do not over-dramatise it. Roughly 90% of the substance carries over from the 2006 Directive — the essential health and safety requirements a press or a robot cell already met do not suddenly invert. The real additions cluster around digitalisation, connectivity, cybersecurity and AI: risk assessment now has to consider whether a connected or software-defined safety function can be corrupted, and the file has to show how that is controlled across design, software and updates. There is also a reworked Annex I that splits high-risk machinery into a part needing notified-body assessment and a part where building to harmonised standards still allows self-declaration. New entries cover safety components with self-evolving machine-learning behaviour and machinery with embedded AI performing safety functions.

For the light curtain specifically: nothing in this changes the device. A Type 4 curtain certified to IEC 61496-1/-2 keeps its certificate. What changes is the paperwork the machine builder wraps around it — declaration of conformity, technical file and risk assessment all reference 2023/1230 from January 2027. A plain interlocking curtain on a press does not, by itself, drag the machine into the AI high-risk list. Read our full breakdown of the 2027 Machinery Regulation if you own that conformity work.

How did ISO 10218-2:2025 change robot-cell light curtains?

The other 2025 development still landing on benches in 2026 is the revised robot-safety series. ISO 10218-2:2025 covers robot applications and cells, and its biggest single change is that ISO/TS 15066 — the collaborative-operation specification, including the biomechanical contact-force limits — has been absorbed into the main standard. The separate cobot rulebook is gone; whether a cell ends up power-and-force-limited or fenced with an interlocking curtain is now an output of one task-based risk assessment.

For protective devices this is reassuring continuity. The standard keeps light curtains, area scanners, safety mats and physical barriers as the accepted toolkit and insists the choice — and the mounting distance — come from the risk assessment and the ISO 13855 calculation. A curtain on a cell access opening to IEC 61496, applied per IEC 62046, remains a mainstream answer. The trap, unchanged from last year, is assuming a robot certified to Part 1 makes the cell compliant. It does not. Compliance is earned at the integration. We cover the device choice in detail in our Type 2 vs Type 4 guide.

What is the real state of IO-Link and IIoT-connected curtains?

IO-Link is standardised as IEC 61131-9, the single-drop digital communication interface for small sensors. Its safety layer extended the familiar OSSD output into OSSDe, so a curtain can carry its dual-channel safety signal, its parameters and its diagnostics over one cable to a safety-rated master, which then talks to a safety controller. The headline pitch is Industry 4.0; the actual benefit on a real line is duller and more useful — fewer cables into the cabinet, and a replacement curtain that pulls its configuration from the controller on power-up instead of needing DIP-switch surgery.

My judgement on where this is worth paying for in 2026: high-mix lines with many sensors and frequent reconfiguration, food and packaging plants where cable count and standardised diagnostics earn their keep, and anyone who will actually consume the telemetry. If the IO-Link master streams per-beam attenuation and alignment-drift data to nowhere, you bought a connected curtain for the price tag, not the value. A hard-wired dual-OSSD curtain on a single press is not obsolete and will not be for years. Our deeper take is in the connectivity-trends briefing.

When does muting or blanking change the ISO 13855 distance?

This question comes up every commissioning season, and the two features get confused constantly. Muting temporarily and deliberately suspends the protective function so a pallet or workpiece can pass through the plane — it must be triggered by a sequenced pair of muting sensors and time-limited so a person cannot walk through in the gap. Done right, muting does not touch the distance calculation; done lazily, it is the single most common way a compliant curtain becomes an unsafe one.

Blanking is different and it does change the maths. Fixed or floating blanking masks beams to let a fixture or moving part sit in the field, which coarsens the curtain's effective resolution. Resolution drives the C term — the intrusion allowance — in the ISO 13855 formula S = K × T + C. Coarsen the resolution and a hand can reach further in before a beam breaks, so the required safety distance grows. Treat every instance of blanking as a recalculation. If you want to run the numbers, our ISO 13855 safety distance calculator does the C-term adjustment for resolution.

What changed for washdown and IP69K food-line curtains?

Not the standard, but the expectation. More food and beverage buyers now specify IP69K from the outset rather than discovering they needed it after the first water-ingress fault. IP69K is the rating tested against close-range high-pressure, high-temperature jets — roughly 80°C water at 80–100 bar — which is the cleaning regime in meat, dairy and ready-meal plants, not the process itself. IP65 or IP67 survives splash and a gentle hose; it does not reliably survive the night-shift cleaning crew.

The failure mode I see on under-rated curtains is rarely a dramatic flood. It is slow ingress at the cable gland and end caps that fogs the optics and produces nuisance trips weeks or months later, which everyone then blames on alignment. On a washdown line, specify IP69K and food-grade or stainless housings on day one. Retrofitting a sealed curtain after a recurring trip fault costs far more than the rating premium would have.

Has anything changed about Type 4 / PL e selection in 2026?

No, and that is worth saying plainly because it is the most marketed-around fact in this category. The relationship is unchanged: a high-risk reach-in — a power press, a press brake, a robot welding cell — needs the diagnostic coverage and redundancy of a Type 4 device to support a PL e / SIL 3 safety function under ISO 13849-1, and that requirement comes from the risk assessment, not from the datasheet of any connected feature. Connectivity, edge diagnostics and IP69K are all real improvements, but none of them substitute for getting the Type and Performance Level right first.

Our own line maps to this the way it always has. The DQT4 family is built to the IEC 61496 Type 4 architecture for high-risk point-of-operation guarding; the DQC hand-guard covers finger and hand detection on presses; and the long-range DQA handles wide access openings and perimeter planes. None of that changed for 2026. The selection logic that decides between them did not change either.

So what should a buyer actually do in 2026?

Keep the safety basics fixed and spend your attention on the envelope. Lock in Type 4 / PL e where the risk assessment demands it, mount to ISO 13855, and pick the IP rating for the worst thing that touches the housing. Then, separately, do the 2026-specific work: re-base your European technical files on Regulation 2023/1230 ahead of January 2027, re-read ISO 10218-2:2025 if you build cells, and decide honestly whether IO-Link connectivity earns its cost on your line or just looks modern. The curtain is not the hard part this year. The decisions around it are.