Blender 5.1 Release Notes-What's New?

Blender 5.1 is currently in Alpha until February 4, 2026. Under development in main.

Some of the current innovations and improvements include:

The asset catalog selector popup shows an improved/corrected label when there are no catalogs to display.
Interpolation lines in the Dope Sheet are now colored to indicate the interpolation type
The Index Switch node is now supported.
A new Sequencer Strip Info node was added.
Deletion of linked data can now be redone.
For AMD GPUs, hardware ray-tracing is now enabled by default through HIP RT.
Planar reflection now supports glossy reflections and refraction.
Maximum number of AOV was bumped to 128.
Added transparency evaluation for Shader To RGB node.
Added back lookdev HDRI view space lighting option.
Improved lookdev HDRI rotating speed and stability.
A separate operator type is now registered for every node tool asset and local node tool. The operator idname can be customized in the “Options” popover (Node tools from previous versions must be opened and saved with 5.1).
The “Mix” color mode of the Mix node now mixes the alpha as well.
The Pack UV Islands node now has inputs to define a custom pack region.
Allows Make Parent directly with a lattice object for lattice deform, this feature is previously available in prior to Blender 4.3 and was lost during grease pencil rewrite.
Support for snapping to the face-center.
The boolean Exact solver can be significantly (>35%) faster with many attributes, and the Manifold solver performance is slightly better in some situations too.
Support for holding “Control” to snap when beveling.
Add “Select Tile” operator.
General: Support for authoring and loading the UsdUIAccessibilityAPI schema on all supported data-block types that allow Custom Properties.
FBX exporter now also exports shapekey normals, when exporting normals for the base mesh is enabled. This allows to solve some import issues with some game engines.
Object data-block selectors now display the object type’s icon.
Add icons to Set Handle Type menu, matching other similar menus.