The present research investigates the H∞ filtering problem for a class of discrete-time switched Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy systems with time-varying delay. The channel fading phenomenon is considered, where the fading rates are depicted by a random variable distributed over a certain interval with known statistical properties. Different from the reported relevant results, all subsystems of the considered switched fuzzy delayed systems can be unstable. To conquer the faultiness of the existing min-switching mechanism for switched delayed systems in discrete-time domain, the improved state-dependent switching paradigm and Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) are constructed. As a result, sufficient conditions with less conservativeness are formulated. In addition, we have shown that the concerned filtering error system is asymptotically mean-square stable (AMSS) and possesses a standard ℓ2 performance level. Finally, the superiority and practicability of the proposed design approach are corroborated through the provided simulation examples.