Blender 2025 Roadmap: Exciting Updates & Features To Look Forward To

Traditionally, the Blender Foundation begins the year by unveiling its roadmap, motivating artists to imagine new possibilities and plan for the exciting changes ahead. The latest article reveals that, after successfully wrapping up long-term projects in 2024, Blender developers are ready to focus on new initiatives.

Some of these are development targets for upcoming open projects at Blender Studio, guiding direction and facilitating testing in true Blender fashion, while others involve regular module work and previously agreed-upon projects.

The proposed projects for this year are organized into the following areas:

• Node Systems: Integrate node systems across various workflows, enabling them to be shared seamlessly, with a focus on enhancing hair dynamics;
• Production Tools: Make production more accessible for small and medium-sized studios;
• Performance: Bring more responsiveness into asset creation with updates to EEVEE and shape keys;
• Sculpting: Non-destructive sculpting with layers and better keyboard-less workflow;
• Story Tools: Create a seamless workflow for storyboarding and basic camera editing from the VSE (video sequence editor).

There's also ongoing maintenance and development in the modules. Here are a few of the areas being worked on:

• Rendering (Cycles, NPR);
• Vulkan;
• UV syncing and other improvements;
• HDR support in all the editors;
• Layered Animation;
• USD and game interoperability via glTF;
• Blender 5.0 backward incompatible changes.

While projects aren't tied to specific release dates, the Blender Foundation follows a regular cadence of three major releases per year. The planned release dates for 2025 are as follows:

• Blender 4.4 (March) will be focused on stability and polishing;
• Blender 4.5 LTS (July) to wrap up the Blender 4 series;
• Blender 5.0 (November) to kickstart a new development cycle.

On top of this, LTS release updates are expected throughout the year:

• Blender 3.6 LTS: until June 2025;
• Blender 4.2 LTS: until July 2026;
• Blender 4.5 LTS: until July 2027.

Learn more about Blender's plans for 2025 here, and to follow new developments, keep an eye on the Blender Developers Blog. Also, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.