# Meilisearch v1.36.0 — Release & Upgrade Intelligence
- **Product:** Meilisearch (https://meilisearch.com)
- **Version:** v1.36.0
- **Released:** Feb 23, 2026
- **Impact Score:** 7/10
- **Breaking Changes:** Source flagged
- **Canonical Analysis:** https://changelogs.us/meilisearch/updates/v1.36.0/

## Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Meilisearch v1.36.0. Source highlight: Version v1.36.0 introduces an exciting update to the ranking rules to improve the engine's relevance. It's actually the first time we've made such a change since v1.0, and we're really happy about this improvement!

## Breaking Changes & Deprecations
- Breaking change: the `meilisearch-openapi-mintlify.json` file will not be available in the release assets anymore. If you were using it, please refer to the one that is now available [in our public documentation repository](https://github.com/meilisearch/documentation/blob/main/assets/open-api/meilisearch-openapi-mintlify.json).

## New Features
- Introduce the `attributeRank` and `wordPosition` criteria by @Kerollmops in https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/pull/6154, https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/pull/6155, and https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/pull/6164
- We continue our policy of migrating everyone to use a homemade HNSW by introducing a new dumpless upgrade step that migrates index uses the old annoy vector store to the new Hannoy one. Changing the vector store backend affects the ranking score. This step can take a couple of minutes when the number of embeddings is high, and we recommend changing the vector store backend beforehand to gain more control if needed. To do so, you must enable the `vectorStoreSetting` experimental feature and set t

## Improvements
- `attributeRank`: A document is considered better if the query words match in a higher searchable attribute. It ignores the position of the query words in this attribute.
- `wordPosition`: A document is considered better if the query words match closer to the beginning of an attribute. The attribute rank is ignored by this rule.
- Improve OpenAPI docs and CIs to improve documentation experience
- Improve output of the declarative tests, also in https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/pull/6164

## Bug Fixes
- Fix search failing when using `attributesToSearchOn` on an empty index
- Fix "test with almost all features" by @dureuill in https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/pull/6139 and https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/pull/6148