We prove that on Fano manifolds, the Kähler-Ricci flow produces a "most destabilising" degeneration, with respect to a new stability notion related to the H-functional. This answers questions of Chen-Sun-Wang and He.

We give two applications of this result. Firstly, we give a purely algebro-geometric formula for the supremum of Perelman's μ-functional on Fano manifolds, resolving a conjecture of Tian-Zhang-Zhang-Zhu as a special case. Secondly, we use this to prove that if a Fano manifold admits a Kähler-Ricci soliton, then the Kähler-Ricci flow converges to it modulo the action of automorphisms, with any initial metric. This extends work of Tian-Zhu and Tian-Zhang-Zhang-Zhu, where either the manifold was assumed to admit a Kähler-Einstein metric, or the initial metric of the flow was assumed to be invariant under a maximal compact group of automorphism.