The public beta is open now, and anyone who buys Live 12 before the early 2027 release gets the upgrade free.
Ableton Live 13 is officially on the way, with the full release due in early 2027 and a public beta open now for anyone keen to get in early. It’s the first major version since Live 12 arrived in March 2024, and its biggest addition is one plenty of Live users have wanted for a long time: ARA 2 support.
Catch up on all the latest news here.
ARA 2 lets compatible plug-ins work on audio directly in your arrangement, so you don’t have to record it into the plug-in first. That means pitch correction, timing fixes and post-production edits can happen without bouncing or leaving Live. Suite owners get Melodyne Essential included, which covers tuning and timing straight out of the box.
On the writing side, a new Step Sequencer handles MIDI patterns, and each row can run at its own length with its own playback settings, which makes it easy to set up polyrhythms that drift in and out of phase. Individual steps carry their own velocity, chance, repeat and pitch bend values. Capture Automation records the knob twists and button presses you make while experimenting and turns them into editable automation. Contextual Browsing lets you load or swap devices and presets from the device chain itself, with keyboard shortcuts to match, so building an Instrument Rack no longer means a detour to the main Browser.
Drum Synth covers everything from classic drum machine hits to physically modelled percussion, with a few stranger engines in between. Suite users also get Looplet, a Max for Live device that runs four playheads across a single sample for loose, grid-free textures, drones and glitchy granular material. Racks now take up to 32 Macros, which can work as remote controls or modulators with their own response curves, and a new Round Robin mode cycles notes through chains in Instrument and MIDI Effect Racks. Envelope Clips bring automation and modulation to effects on Return tracks for the first time, so parameter settings can change from scene to scene in Session View.
Mixing gets plenty of attention too. Multiband Racks split effects across frequency ranges, with linear phase filters among the options, and Mid-Side Racks process the centre and sides of the stereo image separately. Clipper and Transient Shaper join Suite alongside the Classic Dynamics & EQ Pack by Softube. That pack is a set of five Max for Live effects modelled on studio hardware, covering FET and optical compression, British console EQ and compression and analogue-style drive. Device Slots put an overview of each track’s devices in the mixer, where you can toggle and reorder them without clicking through tracks one by one.
Push 3 owners have a lot to dig into. Custom Layouts let you build a different pad surface for every Set, combining note areas, Session View, faders and XYZ controls mapped anywhere in the project. The new Performance Mixer puts clip launching above touch-sensitive pad faders for DJ sets and dub-style mixing. The Step Sequencer works on the pads as well, where sweeping across several pads can make drum rolls speed up or melodies bend. In Device Mode, the jog wheel now moves through nested Rack chains, and Drum Rack returns and pad routings are on Push for the first time.
Until Live 13 is released, Ableton is taking 20% off all new Live 12 licences and upgrades from earlier versions, and any Live 12 edition bought now upgrades to its Live 13 equivalent for free. Push 3, Move and the Push Upgrade Kit are also 20% off until November 30.
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