It is that time of year again. You may be enjoying a scorching hot summer, the serenity of snow, or something in between. For those of you staying inside, buckle up. There is a lot to look forward to!

Before we start with the fresh new targets, let’s take a moment and admire what was put out into the world last year. With no surprises, the release schedule went as planned with three annual major releases.

Blender 4.4

March 18th, 2025

• Animation slots.
• Compositor CPU rewrite.
• Grease Pencil v3 feature parity.
• Video Sequencer text editing improvements.
• Over 700 issues addressed.

Blender 4.5 LTS

July 15th, 2025

• Full Vulkan support.
• Faster startup and EEVEE shader compilation.
• Grease Pencil compositor pass.
• Enhancements to the animation timeline.
• Importing multiple formats in Geometry Nodes.
• UV visibility in all modes.
• Faster Video Sequencer with HDR support.
• Compositor procedural nodes.
• Nearly 400 bugs fixed.

Blender 5.0

November 18th, 2025

• ACES pipeline.
• Improved HDR capabilities.
• UV Sync.
• New volumes and SDF nodes in Geometry Nodes.
• Storyboarding template and workflow (scene sync).
• New modifiers, such as Array and Scatter on Surface.
• Compositor creative effects assets.
• Animation and rigging improvements.
• VR scene inspection, vignetting, and snap turns.
• Nearly 600 bugs fixed.

The result was a combination of new features, stability, performance enhancements, planned project and long-standing issues.

In addition, 2025 saw 20 LTS releases across Blender 3.6 LTS, 4.2 LTS, and 4.5 LTS.

If you compare what was released with last year’s projects announcements, you may notice that some features weren’t even announced.

On the one hand, this is good news. It reflects the dynamic nature of Blender development, with modules working closely with community developers and artists who can steer the project in unexpected ways. These contributions often lead to the discovery of new talent who could eventually become full-time developers. So, the more, the merrier.

On the other hand, not all of the announced projects were completed and released. The reasons are plenty: overly optimistic (and ambitious) targets, over-scoping, unclear designs or scope, missed deadlines, limited resources, shifting priorities, my-dog-ate-my-homework, you name it. There is no sugarcoating it. There is room for improvement, and we aim to do even better this year.

That said, it is in the spirit of the Blender project to propose targets that serve as a beacon, helping focus the community’s efforts toward common goals. So, without further ado, let’s unveil what the team has planned, aim for the stars, and see where we land.

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

• Storytelling
• World Building and Asset Creation
• Animation
• Lighting, Rendering and Compositing
• Collaboration
• Interactivity
• Platforms
• Blender Lab

As a follow-up to Story Tools and Compositor node-modifiers, expect more video sequencer improvements – GPU support, sequencer effects, media bins, ripple and three points editing.

Improved texture workflow with 3D brush, and the beginning of layered textures.

The latter is not straightforward. Its original design dates back to 2022, and it was held back until it could receive proper attention. While it won’t land in Blender this year, features like a revamped baking workflow are on the horizon.

On the rendering side, this is the year NPR will shine brighter. Non-Photorealistic Rendering was prototyped and iterated over in 2024-2025, and it is now ready for development.

After a hiatus, animation layers are back on the menu. The initial goal is to expose this functionality in the Action Editor, building on existing features. The design is being finalized and work is expected to start during Q2.

The Cycles texture cache is in its final stages of development, and will make rendering with many high resolution textures much more efficient. This has been a long requested feature. This will be followed by new principled features and a new OpenPBR node.

Also worth mentioning is a new approach for Scene Layered Compositing. Imagine a stack of effects similar to the new Compositor modifier in the Video Sequencer Editor. It’s so similar, in fact, that an effect designed for the sequencer will also work for the scene.

There are still nodes under the hood, but artists shouldn’t need to deal with them (only if they want to). This is similar to how the new Geometry Nodes Array modifier lets artists focus on the big picture of the intended “effect”, while others can dive into the nodes for extra flexibility and power. To each their own – and to everyone, Blender! :)

Online assets will arrive in Blender in the first half of the year. Opening the door to natively extending Blender with materials, collections, and more from the internet. The Blender Foundation will host a small library of assets on the extensions platform, and third-party platforms can adopt a similar solution.

Project Setup reached its initial milestone in 2025 with variables and path templates. Next up is a dedicated project editor and shared project settings, like assets, add-ons, and project-specific variables.

Finally, overrides will be revisited based on the late-2024 design. A new system, nicknamed dynamic override, will allow for more flexible runtime-defined tweaks. This may also better accommodate simpler single-character rigs, providing an experience similar to the old (pre-2.80 old!) proxy system.

Location scouting began last year but was put on hold to focus on wrapping up VR locomotion improvements. The latter will arrive in Blender 5.1 and are already familiar to all brave early-adopters.

Location scouting itself was demoed as a prototype at the Blender Conference 2025 and is expected in the first half of this year.

Meanwhile, Vulkan and OpenXR interoperability will start in parallel, bringing the XR experience up to par with Blender’s other graphics improvements.

Hair dynamics development continues to make progress, building on the work already highlighted as a target last year. While Closures and Bundles may only be experienced firsthand by technical artists, asset integration features like packing and improvements to the modifier UI enabled the new built-in modifiers in Blender 5.0.

There’s still a long way to go before replacing the legacy particle system, but a new hair solver with a user-friendly interface will be a important step in that direction.

Speaking of nodes, Modal Node Tools will expand the Node-Based Tools to support modal operations. With an evolving design over the years (2023, 2024, 2025), it’s now ready to move from prototype into development. This will also lay groundwork for an interactive mode for Geometry Nodes simulations.

The initial port to Android devices, including touch support, will start. This is but the first mobile platform that is targetted for release. Others should follow in the future.

The initial focus is on tablets, but the same technology will allow Blender to run natively on XR devices. Overall, usability improvements should benefit both on-the-go artists and those already using regular display (or even non-display) tablets.

To launch the Blender Lab initiative, the development team will explore natural language input in Blender. The experiment aims to develop an MCP server for Blender, with communication handled via the existing Python API.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard that enables LLMs to connect with external data, tools, and systems.

There is always maintenance and ongoing development in the modules. Here are a few areas being worked on:

EEVEE feature parity (with pre-EEVEE-next releases) such as better planar reflection. As well as raytracing pipeline improvements and shader compilation optimizations.

After recent Grease Pencil developments to improve curve types support and adding more rendering options, the focus now is on updating the workflow for creating fills and adding support for holes.

After the initial Cycles projects have been completed, the plan is to work on either improved light transport or handling of complex scenes. Improvements to the external render engine API are also being investigated.

And more:

• Multiresolution spike fixes.
• Collection import.
• Flamenco and BAT (Blender Asset Tracer) improvements.
• Exploring editor tabs and docked editors.
• Other module work.

The planned releases for 2026 and their initial dates are:

• Blender 5.1 (March) 
• Blender 5.2 LTS (July) 
• Blender 5.3 (November)

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

• Blender 4.2 LTS – until July 2026
• Blender 4.5 LTS – until July 2027
• Blender 5.2 LTS – until July 2028

All of this progress is made possible thanks to the donations and the ongoing involvement and contributions of the community.

To follow new developments, keep an eye on the Developers Blog and join the discussions on the DevTalk Forum.

On behalf of the team, I hope everyone has a great 2026. Happy Blending!

Dalai Felinto
Head of Product, Blender

As announced in September 2025 during the Blender Conference, the Blender Foundation board is welcoming three new members this year: Dalai Felinto (Head of Product), Fiona Cohen (COO), and Sergey Sharybin (Head of Development). They will join Francesco Siddi (CEO), while Ton Roosendaal transitions to the newly established supervisory board.

As mentioned in the original announcement, preparations for this transition have been extensive. As the Blender project continues to grow, some evolution is natural, but our core values and commitment to the mission remain unchanged: putting the best 3D technology in the hands of artists as free and open source software. 

We are excited to embark on this journey together, and we wish everyone in the Blender community a great 2026!

Francesco Siddi
Fiona Cohen
Dalai Felinto
Sergey Sharybin

Last week, the very sad news reached us that Blender developer Germano Cavalcante de Sousa passed away on 24 November 2025.

Germano had been dealing with leukemia for over a year. He was quite open about it and shared updates in his weekly reports. During this period, Germano kept being involved with Blender when possible. Everyone was impressed by his spirit and passion for his work on Blender. 

Germano started as a triager and mesh editing team member in early 2017. Because of his architecture background, he wished to work on improving precise modeling tools for designers, which was the main topic worked on for many years.

I can’t express how saddened I am by this news. We will severely miss him and we will cherish our memories of Germano. Our hearts go out to his family and friends in Brazil.

Ton Roosendaal, and the entire Blender Team
Amsterdam, 8 December 2025.

If Blender helped you with your projects this year, we’re asking you to help us back.

For the past year, you’ve had access to professional 3D software, completely free. No subscriptions, no licenses, no limits. Blender has been there for your projects, your learning, your art, your business.

Today, we’re asking for €5.

That’s it. If every active Blender user contributes €5 this month, Blender Foundation would meet its entire yearly funding goal for 2026.

Blender’s strength comes from a simple idea: the best 3D technology should belong to everyone. But maintaining and improving professional software isn’t free. It takes developers, designers, and infrastructure.

Blender does not have corporate owners or subscription fees. It has its community.

If Blender was worth €5 of value to you this year, please donate today. If it was worth more, you can give more. Every contribution, no matter the size, keeps Blender growing strong, independent, and free for everyone.

We understand that not everyone can afford €5, but please consider sharing this so the message is received by those who can.

Do your part. Donate €5 (or more) this month.

Thank you for being part of the Blender community!

Francesco Siddi
Blender Foundation

Introducing an innovation space within the Blender project, where designers and developers can work together on challenging or future-facing projects, to keep Blender relevant in the years to come.

Over the years, Blender has grown and matured into a powerful and complex piece of software. With its unstoppable release cycle, a massive, highly demanding, and diverse user community, natural technical debt, and complex technical dependencies, shipping new features and general improvements requires more and more effort and coordination.

Software stability and reliability have become critical for individuals and companies. As a consequence, development efforts focus on those aspects, offering progressive improvements of existing functionality only when these are clear enhancements of what is already there.

This makes it more challenging to innovate, think outside the box, experiment, and break things.

To facilitate this essential aspect of product development, the Blender Foundation is establishing a new project: the Blender Lab. This is the innovation space where designers, developers, and researchers work together on challenging and future-facing projects that will help Blender stay relevant in the years to come.

A lab activity is a project that brings innovation to the Blender project, and contributes to Blender Foundation’s mission. The project should face some unknowns, but also be handled by a team or individual with sufficient domain knowledge to solve them. Lab activities are meant to be independent of Blender releases.

Lab activities are always public and visible on blender.org/lab. Here the ongoing projects are presented, sharing objectives, timeline and participants. Intermediate builds for testing and feedback will be available here as well.

To get started with this initiative, here are some projects that qualify, and that are listed:

• Beyond mouse and keyboard (touch and pen)
• Beyond mouse and keyboard (VR/XR)
• Volume rendering
• Light transport

Some more projects that could be added soon:

• USD Authoring
• AI and ML technologies, starting with a Blender MCP server

Lab activities can be grouped in two categories:

• Applied research, which is the main focus of the lab. Developing and eventually shipping groundbreaking solutions based on the latest research and knowledge in the field
• Academic research. For example, this can be achieved by participating in projects organized by institutions such as universities and research centers, where Blender developers offer an advisory role on how technology can be implemented in production software.

The goal is to start with a limited number of projects, assessed by Blender Foundation with the support of key Blender contributors. During the course of 2026, more guidelines will be defined and shared. If you are interested in submitting a proposal for a Lab project, you can do so by contacting Blender Foundation and sharing a public document where you describe the project and make a compelling case for it. The adoption of a project depends on many factors, including funds availability, relevance to the Blender missions, experience of the applicant, and more.

Special credit goes to Ton Roosendaal for advocating for this project since 2018. At the time the Blender project was not able to allocate resources to the initiative, but today, thanks to growing community and corporate support there starts to be a path for it. Future campaigns and partnerships will be crucial for the success of this project. You can make this happen by joining the Blender Development Fund at fund.blender.org.

Francesco Siddi
Blender Foundation

Blender Foundation announces its annual user survey, with the goal to learn and understand:

• The user community demographics: age group, geography and professional background, etc.
• Common use cases and workflows
• Most wanted improvements
• How people connect and get involved as contributors
• How the community spends money (donations, marketplaces, training, etc.)
• Future direction of the project

The anonymized results of the survey will be publicly shared in an illustrated and commented format, and also as a raw dataset.

Login with your Blender ID to fill in the survey (public results will be anonymized).

Your input will help shape the future of Blender.

Thank you!
Francesco

The 2024 Blender Foundation report is now publicly available. Download it at Annual report 2024 (pdf).

The report is complete, but we plan to expand it further with an insightful “Blender by the numbers” section in the coming weeks.

Thanks so much for the support we’ve had from you and/or your organizations. Thanks to the Development Fund we could make a real impact; to improve the lives and creative endeavors of many people.

Feel free to share this report with everyone.

Register for our in-person community on Tuesday, June 10th!

As it is now tradition, a small delegation of the Blender team will attend the Annecy festival, June 9-13. This year though, no booth but a bigger gathering for people who want to connect.

Following the success of the last two years, Blender is going to host a “studios” breakfast session (Birds of a Feather-style), this time as part of the official program and in a bigger venue within the Festival-MIFA. Focused on connecting producers, developers, TDs and artists working in studios where Blender is part of the pipeline, the goal is to share ongoing Blender development, Blender Studio pipeline insights, and give visibility to teams who wish to share their experience using Blender in production. All while being treated some delicious croissant and coffee!

The event will take place on Tuesday, June 10 at 09:00 at Le Campus Mifa – Salle 1. Limited spots are available and you need an accreditation to enter the Campus – make sure you register if you are interested, and we’ll send confirmations closer to the event.

See you there!

As Blender grows in popularity, the amount of products and projects using “Blender” as part of their name is growing as well. While there are some short-term benefits in incorporating the “Blender” name in a product, there are often unintended consequences when it reaches a wider audience. For example:

• An extension becomes popular and starts charging a fee to download. Using Blender as part of the brand could imply a relationship or endorsement from the Blender project. 
• A community website or service starts being considered official or affiliated to the project, because it contains the Blender name in it. In reality, the project is fully independent.

With the introduction of the Blender Extensions platform, branding issues become more obvious, as add-ons that have “Blender” in their name could appear right inside the software, creating confusion. 

As general branding guidelines for products or services, we recommend third parties to avoid using the name “Blender”, especially not as the beginning of the name. Blender Foundation wishes to distinguish official products or services that way. For example: Blender Conference, Blender Extensions, Blender ID. This is explained in detail in the Trademark Policy page.

While we understand that using the name “Blender” in a product will give quick recognition and short term benefits, it is also common sense that in the mid and long term developing a unique own brand for products will always be more beneficial. It allows you to trademark it, promote it, and expand it beyond Blender itself. Besides that, brand diversity in the Blender ecosystem is highly desirable, as it reflects the amount of independent business happening around Blender.

This is what happened with Blender Market. At the time (15 years ago), the idea of creating a commercial Blender-focused marketplace was truly pioneering, and that initiative was welcomed and supported by Blender Foundation. Initially, it was helpful for the market to bear Blender’s name as it helped with discoverability. Today, not so much, as it often gets mistaken for Blender’s actual marketplace. 

Blender does not have plans to create an add-on marketplace, but rather focus on the free extensions platform, so it becomes important to set a distinction between the two.

Last year, Autotroph (the organization behind Blender Market) announced the decision to rebrand the marketplace to “Superhive”, in an effort to align with the Blender trademark policies. The rebrand is now in place, and this is something that Blender Foundation highly appreciates. 

Existing and new products featuring the Blender name are encouraged to follow Blender Market’s steps. We understand that websites and products using the name Blender already for a long time, will not find it practical or desirable to rename. 

Blender Foundation does not intend to seek legal or public action in cases of such trademark violations. However, Blender Foundation does reserve the right to not advertise confusingly named Blender products on the extensions platform.

For more information, blender.org/about/trademark-policy.