Latest Media Encoder 26.2 - CUDA not available

We are currently looking into the issue.

take a look at this thread in premier forum…  seems to confirm there is an issue, and fix is in progress:

Encoding real slow in 26.0 | Community

Update 26.2.0.012 (Feb 2, 2026) - doesn't seem to affect the dialog boxes for HW acceleration.  I have not had time to test to see if there is actually any HW acceleration or not.  Hopefully someone from Adobe will comment/clarify.

​@Yori X A follow-up to my original note, can you confirm where you're trying to select ‘cuda’ as the render engine.  To me it appears that in Media Encoder beta, in “general” it shows the software render, but doesn't allow you to change it, you have to go to the “media” take within Media encoder, and you will see the following dialog:

the Adobe Engineers - Not sure why in “general” it shows Software only render engine, and in Media tab it shows something different - I would suggest a closer look for two reasons:

1. These dialogs should probably not be in two different places 
2. They should agree on what they are doing
3. Media Encoder runs like the slowest dog at the racetrack; I wonder if there is a bug that actually has the HW acceleration off and that's why it's so slow - as related to these dialog differences?

Id really like to get some feedback on this, as ME is awfully slow the last few builds (like a 30 min video with only color correction, taking 10-20 hours with ME, and premier can process it while ME is running at the same time in under 60 min!

Build 26.2.0.005 Jan 26, 2026

Confirmed Same issue - this might explain why the renders via media encoder take 20+ hours when from within premiere the same 30 min clip exports in 30 min….

By the way, “latest build” is hard to track, highly recommend consider posting the exact build number your using: 

The dialog from within Media Encoder, only has the software render available:

Within Premiere, the hardware is set properly: