Blender In 2026: Planned Features & Projects
The Blender Foundation has revealed its goals for this year, along with the scheduled dates for the next major releases.
Blender
As usual, the Blender Foundation starts the year by sharing its roadmap. Comparing what was released in 2025 with last year's project announcements, you'll notice that some features were never announced at all, reflecting the fast-moving nature of Blender's development, but also showing there's room for improvement. With that in mind, this year's goals should be seen as targets rather than promises, a guide to help focus the community's efforts toward shared objectives.
This year's projects are organized into the following areas:
- Storytelling;
- World Building and Asset Creation;
- Animation;
- Lighting, Rendering, and Compositing;
- Collaboration;
- Interactivity;
- Platforms;
- Blender Lab.
This means you can expect further improvements to the video sequencer, including GPU support, new sequencer effects, media bins, ripple, and three-point editing. There are also plans for a better texture workflow with the 3D brush, the introduction of layered textures and animation layers, a Cycles texture cache, online assets, hair dynamics, initial port to Android devices, and more.
The planned Blender releases for 2026 are Blender 5.1, scheduled for March, Blender 5.2 LTS in July, and Blender 5.3 in November. In addition to these releases, long-term support updates will continue throughout the year, with Blender 4.2 LTS supported until July 2026, Blender 4.5 LTS until July 2027, and Blender 5.2 LTS until July 2028.
Learn more about Blender's plans for 2026 and ongoing projects here, subscribe to our Newsletter and join our 80 Level Talent platform, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Instagram, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
