I did some digging into the Zigbee firmware change in Homey 13.5.0.
The interesting part is that this appears to be indeed a much bigger change than the Homey changelog suggests - but that’s normall, I haven’t ever seen any notice about update of firmware chip (and there are actually few of them) - I believe it’s just Athom’s approach to ensure that when issues are reported, they are not reported in the way “I saw you changed firmware and gues what - now NOTHING works” … 
On Homey Pro 2026, the Zigbee firmware moved from 7.4.2-0 to 9.1.0-0, which means a significant jump in the underlying Silicon Labs EmberZNet/Zigbee stack.
Looking (with AI help) at the Silicon Labs release notes between those versions, the more relevant improvements include:
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**Improved APS reliability, including APS acknowledgements (ACKs), means Homey can get end-to-end confirmation that a Zigbee command actually reached the target device’s APS layer—not just the next router—so failed deliveries can be detected and retried more reliably.
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Network steering / joining fixes, including a fix that specifically improves join success on larger Zigbee networks.
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Rejoin and recovery improvements, especially around Trust Center connectivity.
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**BDB 3.1 / Zigbee PRO R23 groundwork adds newer Zigbee security and recovery mechanisms, including Dynamic Link Keys for stronger per-device trust, APS frame-counter synchronization to avoid communication failures after resets or desynchronization, and improved Trust Center/rejoin handling for more robust network security.
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Routing-related improvements and more configurable route-table handling.
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Green Power fixes, including commissioning and proxy/sink table handling.
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Security-storage fixes, especially around key migration and secure key storage.
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Better handling and diagnostics around RSSI/LQI/channel information at stack level.
One important caveat: these are capabilities and fixes in the Silicon Labs 9.1 stack. That does not automatically mean Athom enabled every new feature in Homey’s firmware. In particular, I would not interpret this alone as “Homey now supports Zigbee 4.0, despite :
Silicon Labs states for SDK 9.0:
“Zigbee 4.0 compliance with BDB 3.1 and R23 support”
From a practical Homey perspective, the most interesting expected benefits are probably:
1. Better command delivery reliability
2. Better pairing/joining, especially in larger meshes
3. Better rejoin/recovery behaviour after network disruptions
There is also already a Silicon Labs 9.1.1 release, which contains additional improvements for sleepy end devices and APS retry timing, while Homey currently appears to use 9.1.0-0. … so let’s see few months I gues until we get there 
It would be useful if Athom could confirm which of the new stack features are actually enabled/configured in the Homey NCP firmware, and whether Homey Pro 2023 receives the same Zigbee firmware image/version as Homey Pro 2026 but maybe it will come simply with “Zigbee 4.0 support” … .
So, in short: this does not look like just a minor radio firmware refresh. The jump from 7.4.x to 9.1.x brings a substantial amount of Zigbee stack development, even if only part of it may be exposed or used by Homey today.
Currently I’m happy to report that so far my 86 Zigbee devices still works fine.