Blender 5.2 LTS splash artwork: a cave lion, Panthera spelaea, mid-roar in falling snow

Blender 5.2 LTS · launch keynote

Released July 14, 2026 · updates until July 2028

The Long Roar Ahead

Physics rebuilt in nodes. Asset libraries that live online. A renderer that stops choking on textures. And two years of fixes behind all of it — this is the release we want every production on.

Mara LindqvistProduct Manager, Blender (persona for this template)

Launch keynoteSeptember 2026

render: Joanna Kobierska, CC BY 4.0 — Blender 5.2 LTS splash “Panthera spelaea” (blender.org/download/demo-files, 141 MB .blend; see README for full credits) · Blender® is a registered trademark of the Blender Foundation; the logo identifies the software being discussed.

The headline

One LTS, five numbers worth the upgrade

2years of fixes — 5.2 LTS is supported until July 2028

5.1×less texture memory in Cycles with Texture Cache (Attic: 5,417 → 1,052 MB)

2×EEVEE speed-up in instance-heavy scenes

35new Compositor nodes, six new socket types

>7,200Development Fund members and 47 organisations at launch

SimulateCloth and hair dynamics as Geometry Nodes, on an open XPBD solver — experimental, and already in artists’ hands.

RenderA texture cache that loads only the tiles a frame needs; Thin Wall in the Principled BSDF for paper, leaves and glass sheets.

ShareOnline asset libraries: the Essentials library on demand, and a way to host your own for a studio or a community.

Sources: blender.org/download/releases/5-2/ (release notes, July 14 2026 — Texture Cache memory chart, EEVEE “2x speed-up in instance-heavy scenes”, Compositor “35 new nodes … six new socket types”); blender.org/press/blender-5-2-lts-release/ (July 14 2026 — “over 7200 individuals and 47 organizations”, support “until July 2028”). Memory ratio computed from the published Attic figures.

What’s new · 1 of 4 experimental

Physics, solved in nodes

Cloth and hair simulation rebuilt as Geometry Nodes: a one-click modifier for artists, an open solver for technical ones. Four building blocks.

Cloth DynamicsA node-based modifier (and node group) that gives any mesh cloth behaviour, with built-in controls for pinning, tearing, stretch and bend.
Hair DynamicsThe same approach for hair; the only extra need is a surface to attach to. The updated Empty Hair operator sets it up for you.
EffectorsColliders turn any closed mesh into a collision object; forces come with gravity built in; Closure and Custom Effector nodes inject your own behaviour. Tags decide which geometry each effector touches.
XPBD Solver nodeThe engine underneath the assets. Edit its constraints, or build a new simulation system from scratch.

1 / 4

Space Fabric Cloth Tear demo: a cloth sheet tearing apart in a dark space scene, simulated with the 5.2 Cloth Dynamics nodes — render: Cartesian Caramel, CC BY 4.0 — “Space Fabric Cloth Tear”, a Blender 5.2 physics demo file (blender.org/download/demo-files, 9 MB)

Source: blender.org/download/releases/5-2/ — “Physics: Solved” (Cloth Dynamics, Hair Dynamics, Effectors: Colliders / Forces / Custom, Tag&Filter, XPBD Solver node), July 14 2026. Labelled experimental in the 5.2 LTS press release.

What’s new · 2 of 4

Cycles stops loading what it will never see

Texture Cache generates a tiled, mip-mapped .tx file per image and loads only the tiles and resolutions a render needs. One toggle — Performance → Texture Cache → Auto Generate — and the memory chart changes shape.

The trade: a small rendering-time cost and disk space for the .tx files. Savings are scene-dependent; these are the three published test scenes.

Texture Cache offTexture Cache onUnit: MB, peak memory

Source: blender.org/download/releases/5-2/ — “Cached In” memory-usage chart (Attic 5,417 → 1,052 MB; Bistro 4,341 → 764 MB; Junkshop 3,516 → 2,134 MB), July 14 2026. Percentages on the bars are computed from those figures.

What’s new · 3 of 4

Paper-thin, finally

Thin Wall is a new mode in the Principled BSDF. The surface is treated as a zero-thickness slab with its layers mirrored around the base: reflection and transmission for thin glass, diffuse and translucent scattering for paper and leaves. Cycles and EEVEE both.

Drag the handle across the lamps. The right side is the same scene with Thin Wall on — the shades stop behaving like solid blocks and start glowing like paper.

Paper lanterns rendered with Thin Wall off: the shades look thick and dull

The same paper lanterns with Thin Wall on: light passes through the shades

Thin Wall offThin Wall on

render: Christopher 3D — “Thin Wall renders by Christopher 3D”, published on the Blender 5.2 LTS release notes (blender.org site content is CC BY-SA unless marked otherwise; attribution Blender Foundation and the artist).

Source: blender.org/download/releases/5-2/ — “Paper-thin wall”, Principled BSDF Thin Wall mode, July 14 2026.

What’s new · 4 of 4

And the rest of the LTS, in one screen

Assets · online

Essentials on demand. Dozens of new materials, compositing effects, HDR worlds and node setups — hosted online, so the download is no larger. A new Asset Libraries preference lets a studio host its own, with one-click updates.

EEVEE

2× faster in instance-heavy scenes; the 8-attributes-per-material limit is gone; 1.5 GB and 2 GB shadow pools; anisotropic filtering; a Backface option in screen tracing that cuts light leaks in Screen Space GI.

Compositor

Six new socket types — Matrix, Rotation, String, Object, Font, Integer Vector — and 35 new nodes. Gizmos auto-key. The interactive compositor plays animation and runs only when something changed.

Grease Pencil

Delaunay fill: exact geometry from boundary strokes, automatic gap detection, inverse fill, zoom-independent. Dots and Squares line materials gain placement settings; 19 new brushes in Online Essentials.

Sculpt

Scene Project brush wraps a surface onto nearby geometry, and the voxel remesher now interpolates vertex colours and other attributes instead of nearest-point sampling, so repeated remeshing keeps the paint.

Colour & VR

Input colour spaces for Apple, ARRI, Blackmagic, Canon and Sony cameras plus Adobe RGB; colour spaces organised into menus. VR location scouting: block camera vantage points from inside the scene.

Source: blender.org/download/releases/5-2/ — Assets, EEVEE (“What’s New”), Compositor, Grease Pencil, Sculpt, Color Management and VR sections, July 14 2026. Compositor node count and EEVEE speed-up quoted as published; “dozens of” assets is the release page’s own wording.

Step-through · four releases in twelve months

How we got here

Blender 4.5 LTS splash: DOGWALK, a child and a big dog in a snowy landscape, by Blender Studio — 4.5 LTS
July 15, 2025 · supported until July 2027

Full Vulkan support; faster startup and EEVEE shader compilation
Importing OBJ, CSV, STL, VDB, PLY and text in Geometry Nodes
Faster Video Sequencer with HDR; nearly 400 bugs fixed

Development Fund at release: **7,500 individuals · 38 organisations**

render: Blender Studio, CC BY 4.0 — 4.5 LTS splash “DOGWALK” (blender.org/download/demo-files)

Blender 5.0 splash by Juan Hernández: a rider on a dragon banking over a snowy mountain valley — 5.0
November 18, 2025

ACES 1.3/2.0 pipeline, Rec.2020 working space, HDR display
Volumes and SDF nodes; Array and Scatter on Surface modifiers; bundles and closures
Storyboarding workflow; VR scene inspection; nearly 600 bugs fixed

Development Fund at release: **7,900 individuals · 41 organisations**

render: Juan Hernández, CC BY-SA — 5.0 splash (blender.org/download/releases/5-0/)

Blender 5.1 splash from Singularity by Blender Studio: a figure before a vast machine — 5.1
March 17, 2026

Winter of Quality: more than 350 reported issues fixed
Cold start of Barbershop Interior on Vulkan 24.9 s → 11.7 s; viewport 39 → 159 fps (24 threads)
Grease Pencil fill with holes; Raycast shader node; VFX Platform 2026, Python 3.13

Development Fund at release: **7,800 individuals · 44 organisations**

render: Blender Studio, CC BY 4.0 — 5.1 splash “Singularity” (blender.org/download/demo-files)

Blender 5.2 LTS splash: Panthera spelaea by Joanna Kobierska — 5.2 LTS
July 14, 2026 · supported until July 2028

Node-based cloth and hair physics on the XPBD solver (experimental)
Cycles Texture Cache; Thin Wall; EEVEE 2× in instance-heavy scenes
Online asset libraries; 35 new Compositor nodes; Delaunay fill

Development Fund at release: **7,200 individuals · 47 organisations**

render: Joanna Kobierska, CC BY 4.0 — 5.2 LTS splash “Panthera spelaea” (blender.org/download/demo-files)

1 / 4 · seen 1 of 4

Sources: blender.org/development/projects-to-look-forward-to-in-2026/ (Dalai Felinto, Jan 30 2026 — 2025 release dates and headline lists, bug counts); blender.org/download/releases/5-1/ (Mar 17 2026 — Winter of Quality “more than 350 reported issues”, cold-start and viewport benchmarks); Dev Fund counts from each release’s press release on blender.org/press (Jul 15 2025, Nov 18 2025, Mar 17 2026, Jul 14 2026).

Feature comparison

What each release brought — and why LTS is the one to pin

Capability	4.5 LTSJul 15, 2025	5.0Nov 18, 2025	5.1Mar 17, 2026	5.2 LTSJul 14, 2026
Support window	until Jul 2027	until 5.1	until 5.2	until Jul 2028
Vulkan backend	full support	yes	yes, faster cold start	yes
ACES / wide-gamut colour	—	ACES 1.3 & 2.0, Rec.2020	yes	+ camera colour spaces
Node-based cloth & hair physics	—	—	—	XPBD solver (experimental)
Cycles Texture Cache	—	—	—	yes, .tx files
Principled BSDF Thin Wall	—	—	—	Cycles & EEVEE
Online asset libraries	—	—	—	Essentials + self-hosted
Grease Pencil fill	v3 workflow	curve types	fill with holes	Delaunay fill
Bugs / issues fixed (as published)	nearly 400	nearly 600	more than 350	“hundreds” (no count published)
Development Fund at release	7,500 · 38 orgs	7,900 · 41 orgs	7,800 · 44 orgs	7,200 · 47 orgs

Sources: release notes at blender.org/download/releases/4-5/, /5-0/, /5-1/, /5-2/ (fetched Sep 7 2026); bug counts and dates from blender.org/development/projects-to-look-forward-to-in-2026/ (Jan 30 2026) and the 5.1 notes; Dev Fund counts from each release’s press release. Non-LTS releases are superseded by the next release; LTS windows from blender.org/download/lts/.

Ecosystem

Who pays for a free release

Individual members at each release (press release); second row = corporate members; “today” = fund.blender.org

$330,023monthly contribution to the Development Fund, today

47corporate members — up from 33 at the 3.6 LTS launch

Individual membership more than doubled between the 4.2 LTS and 4.4 launches, then settled between seven and eight thousand. Corporate membership has climbed at every LTS. The honest read: the fund has plateaued at the individual level and grown at the studio level — which is exactly the audience an LTS is for.

Sources: fund.blender.org “Numbers” block, read Sep 7 2026 ($330,023 monthly · 7,641 individuals · 47 corporate); press releases on blender.org/press for 3.6 LTS (Jun 27 2023: 3,250 / 33), 4.0 (Nov 14 2023: 3,500 / 37), 4.2 LTS (Jul 16 2024: 4,400 / 38), 4.4 (Mar 18 2025: 7,300 / 35), 4.5 LTS (Jul 15 2025: 7,500 / 38), 5.0 (Nov 18 2025: 7,900 / 41), 5.1 (Mar 17 2026: 7,800 / 44), 5.2 LTS (Jul 14 2026: 7,200 / 47). Counts are “over N” in the originals.

Roadmap

Three LTS lines, one more release this year

5.3 · NovAnimation layers in the Action Editor; NPR rendering moves from prototype to development.
2026Scene layered compositing — a stack of effects over nodes, like the Sequencer’s Compositor modifier.
2026Modal node tools and an interactive mode for Geometry Nodes simulations; dynamic overrides.
2026Project editor and shared project settings; Vulkan + OpenXR interoperability; the first Android port (tablets first).
LabBlender Lab: an MCP server for natural-language input over the existing Python API.

Source: blender.org/development/projects-to-look-forward-to-in-2026/ — Dalai Felinto, Head of Product, Jan 30 2026: releases “5.1 (March), 5.2 LTS (July), 5.3 (November)”; LTS updates “4.2 LTS – until July 2026, 4.5 LTS – until July 2027, 5.2 LTS – until July 2028”; project list as published. Targets are “a beacon”, not commitments — the post says so.

The ask

Pin your pipeline to 5.2 LTS. Then help us make 5.3.

Studios

Move productions to 5.2 LTS

Two years of fixes, no feature churn, and a texture cache that changes what fits in memory. If you shipped on 4.2 LTS, its window closed in July 2026.

Artists

Break the physics

The cloth and hair nodes are experimental on purpose. Try them, tear things, and file what breaks — that is how they leave “experimental” before the next LTS.

Everyone

Join the Development Fund

7,200 people and 47 organisations paid for this release. An LTS is two years of maintenance; that is what the monthly contribution buys.

Download Blender 5.2 LTS blender.org/download

render: Joanna Kobierska, CC BY 4.0 — Blender 5.2 LTS splash, reused from the title slide · Blender® is a registered trademark of the Blender Foundation. Presenter is a persona; every figure is cited on its slide.