When Amazon announced their smart AI powered update to their in-home speaker based voice assistant “Alexa” almost 18 months ago, there was a fair bit of excitement about it, but still today no sign of it for Aussie homes and it looks like the wait is going to be longer still.

Today at their delivering the future event in London the company announced that Alexa+ would now be available in France in addition to the existing countries (US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria).

UPDATE: Unfortunately, despite the fanfare of today’s event, there was no fanfare about Australia. However, I spoke to Trevor Wood, Senior Manager, AGI at Amazon and he confirmed that Australia would get Alexa+ in 2026!

Alexa+ will be part of Amazon’s Prime subscription program, driving further value for their subscribers over and above the shopping benefits, TV shows, Music and now AI smarts.

With Google all but out of the Aussie smart speaker market – likely until they are ready with new Gemini enabled devices, the delay on Alexa+ isn’t really a huge issue for the brand in Australia because there’s simply no competition.

Exact timing of the Alexa+ launch locally will come in the months ahead.

Trevor Long travelled to London as a guest of Amazon Australia – Our full commercial interests and travel disclosures are available here