The Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Berkeley Lab remains one of the brightest sources for soft x-rays worldwide. A multiyear upgrade of the ALS is underway, which includes new and replacement x-ray beamlines, a replacement of many of the original insertion devices and many upgrades to the accelerator. The accelerator upgrade that affects the ALS performance most directly is the ALS brightness upgrade, which reduced the horizontal emittance from 6.3 to 2.0 nm (2.5 nm effective). Magnets for this upgrade were installed starting in 2012 followed by a transition to user operations with 2.0 nm emittance in spring 2013. Copyright © 2013 by JACoW.