I happened to be checking my iLok account and look what I found. A full set of new Pro Tools  12.6 licenses. Avid have released this statement..

Perpetual license owners on Upgrade Plans might have noticed new Pro Tools licenses/bundles starting to appear in your iLok accounts. These are being provided in preparation for our next software release.

No action is required at this time, though they can be Activated now and should not cause any disruption to Pro Tools.

Owners of perpetual Pro Tools/Pro Tools HD licenses will see equivalent licenses/bundles deposited which will require surrender of your existing licenses/bundles. For example, someone with a "Pro Tools HD with Upgrade and Support Plan 2015" bundle will see a "Pro Tools HD Perpetual Bundle" deposited. That new bundle will include licenses for v10/11/12 (same as your existing bundle) as well as new Pro Tools Perpetual, Pro Tools HD Perpetual, and Pro Tools DigiLink I/O licenses.

Note that the Pro Tools Licensing FAQ will be updated later this week with more detailed information.

If you have any issues or concerns about your licenses, please start a support case via the Access The Support Center link in your Avid account.

So I checked my Avid Account and look what I found...

Check You Have Everything And The Time To Resolve Issues Before Upgrading

Please note the title of this story, "Pro Tools 12.6 Licenses STARTING To Appear In iLok Accounts".

• Please check your iLok account before installing 12.6
• Make sure you have installed the new licenses safely BEFORE you run the installer.
• As we always say, do not update and upgrade until you have the time and space to do it and fix any issues you find.

You Will Need To Surrender Your Existing Pro Tools 12 Bundle To Get New 12.6 Related Licenses

As part of the Pro Tools 12.6 Upgrade you will need a new license bundle called Pro Tools Perpetual Bundle (with 10/11/12) for Pro Tools vanilla and Pro Tools HD Perpetual Bundle (with 10/11/12+I/O) for HD users.  

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS IN YOUR ILOK ACCOUNT PRO TOOLS 12.6 WILL NOT WORK. 

The key changes are that there is no longer a dated Pro Tools license as before like Pro Tools 2015. Instead there is a Pro Tools Perpetual license for Vanilla users and there are Pro Tools HD Perpetual and a DigiLink I/O licenses for HD users.

If these licenses are not on a connected iLok Pro Tools 12.6 will not work.

Surrender

When you transfer the new Pro Tools License bundle onto your iLok in the iLok License Manager app, you will get this Surrender warning message.

You will need to agree to surrender your old iLok license bundle and then you will get the new bundle deposited onto your iLok and all should work fine.

As we understand it, the new Pro Tools Perpetual license is tied to your Avid Account and so as long as you have an active upgrade plan everything will work fine. If you choose to allow your upgrade plan to expire then the other licenses will enable you to keep using Pro Tools on the last version you had when your upgrade plan expired (a perpetual license). 

DigiLink License

As to the DigiLink license. Every HD user using HD hardware, will need a DigiLink license as this now turns on the DigiLink ports on your HD Native or HDX cards. Without that license your DigiLink ports will not work.  For more information on the DigiLink license please see our Pro Tools DigiLink License FAQ.

What Is In The Pro Tools 12.6 Read Me File

We have just been through the Pro Tools 12.6 Read Me document and here are some of the things we have found...

Warning displayed when opening a session or project created in Pro Tools 12.6 in a lower version of Pro Tools.  

Any session or project created with Pro Tools 12.6 that uses clip effects will present a warning when opened in a lower version of Pro Tools (such as Pro Tools 12.5). When the session is opened following this warning, any clip effects data will be dropped. If you save the session or project in the lower version of Pro Tools, the Save As dialog opens instead so that you do not overwrite the original 12.6 session or project.

Clip effects settings are lost when sharing tracks with Pro Tools 12.5.x. 

Track collaboration between Pro Tools HD 12.6 and lower versions of Pro Tools will result in losing clip effects settings on shared tracks. Earlier versions of Pro Tools drop clip effects settings from tracks that are shared from Pro Tools HD 12.6. There is no warning when clip effects settings are lost while collaborating. To avoid this issue, render clip effects for all clips with clip effects on tracks you want to share with any collaborator running a lower version of Pro Tools.

Known Issues Still Refers to 12.5.2

The Known Issues are still shown as the ones for Pro Tools 12.5.2 and currently in the Read Me file dated 12th September 2016 there is no list of bug fixes, so we can only assume that this will be updated shortly.