Publish a Retained Message to a Topic
Problem
You want to publish a retained message to an MQTT topic on a broker.
Solution
Set the Retain option to true in the MQTT Output node
configuration dialog, or set the msg.retain message property to true in the
message sent to the node.
Example

Flow JSON
[{"id":"4a7dc819.3aa6f8","type":"mqtt out","z":"eda2a949.74ea98","name":"","topic":"sensors/livingroom/temp","qos":"","retain":"true","broker":"61de5090.0f5d9","x":430,"y":420,"wires":[]},{"id":"fb7b873.c391878","type":"inject","z":"eda2a949.74ea98","name":"temperature","topic":"","payload":"22","payloadType":"num","repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"x":230,"y":420,"wires":[["4a7dc819.3aa6f8"]]},{"id":"61de5090.0f5d9","type":"mqtt-broker","z":"","broker":"localhost","port":"1883","clientid":"","usetls":false,"compatmode":true,"keepalive":"60","cleansession":true,"willTopic":"","willQos":"0","willPayload":"","birthTopic":"","birthQos":"0","birthPayload":""}]
Discussion
Once you have sent a retained message to a topic, all subscribers will receive that message when they subscribe.
To clear a previously retained topic from the broker, send a blank message to that topic with the retain flag set.