5.2 LTS — Blender

Showcase Reel

Blender 5.2 LTS showcase reel featuring work by the Blender community.

Watch the Recap Video

New features overview by Jonathan Lampel and Wayne Dixon from CGCookie, Cartesian Caramel, Paul Caggegi

Blender 5.2 LTS splash artwork by Joanna Kobierska, featuring the now-extinct Panthera spelaea

Released July 14th, 2026

GEOMETRY NODES

Music to your Nodes

Imagine driving your nodes with imported audio files, how does that sound?

The Sample Sound Frequencies node, coupled with the new Sound socket, brings audio-reactive animations and simulations to Geometry Nodes.

Sound files can be loaded directly into the node tree. To hear them during playback, add them to the Video Sequencer as well, and set Playback Sync to “Sync to Audio”.

Sample Sound Frequencies node.

GEOMETRY NODES

Bevel and be well

A new node enters the chat: Mesh Bevel.

The long awaited power of detailed procedural control over the edges or vertices.

Cloth Dynamics

Quickly add a cloth-like behaviour to any mesh with a new node-based modifier (and a node group as well). Comes with a list of built-in controls for pinning, tearing, controlling stretch and bendiness.

Hair Dynamics

Hair physics work similarly to cloth: the only extra requirement is having a surface object to attach hair to. The set up itself can be automated with the updated Empty hair operator.

Effectors

New node-based dynamics come with a bunch of built-in effectors for effortless gravity and/or surface collision application. In 5.2. LTS, three types of customisable effectors are available:

Colliders

Apply a Collider modifier to transform any closed mesh into a collision object. Or go further in a fully procedural set up and use the collider effector bundle and pass into the dynamics node.

Forces

Built-in gravity setup is available, as well as endless possibilities to build your own custom forces.

Custom effectors

Inject fully custom behaviour into simulations using Closure and Custom Effector nodes.

Tag&Filter

Tag-based filtering system for effectors is also here to easily determine which geometries they affect.

Each simulated geometry can have multiple tags for the effector to specify which tags it should affect.

Physics: Solved

Reimagined, node based: Blender 5.2. LTS introduces a brand new procedural approach to physics for hair and cloth simulations.

The power behind experimental node-based physics lies within the new built-in XPBD Solver node.

While built-in assets contain use-case specific declarative systems around it, advanced users can customize the simulations further. Adapt existing node groups by editing constraints as needed or create a new simulation system from scratch.

What the community is creating with node-based physics

Bundle Up

Blender 5.0 introduced the concept of bundles, which can now be attached to geometry to carry arbitrary data across modifier and object boundaries.

Use new Get Geometry Bundle and Set Geometry bundle nodes to unlock new workflows and possibilities.

Set and Get Geometry Bundle nodes.

More Geometry Nodes

Lists New core data type that allows storing a sequence of arbitrary length (e.g. numbers or strings). Lots of new nodes were added to provide control. Create lists through Field to List and Closure to List nodes. Access lists with List Length and Get List Item nodes. Modify lists with classic Math nodes as well as new Filter List and Sort List nodes. Attributes The Capture Attribute node now supports selection. The new Rename Attribute node renames attributes with a specific prefix. The Get Attribute Names node outputs a list of the names of attributes in a geometry, optionally filtered by domain and data type. The new Transfer Attributes node can transfer an arbitrary number of attributes from one geometry to another. Attributes can now be stored as 4D float vectors (note that Geometry Nodes currently only operate on 3D vectors). Strings Geometry Nodes now support String fields.

The Find in String node can now find the first occurrence from the end. Remove specific characters at the start or end of a string with the new Trim String node. Reverse the character order in a string with the new Reverse String. Switch between upper and lower case through the new Set String Case. String and String to ValueBaseinput. Split text into a list based on a delimiter with new Split String node. Empty Objects Geometry nodes modifiers can be now applied to empties. Recommended use: custom effectors for simulations, procedural effects that don’t require original geometry. Curves You can now access built-in attributes to control the computation of the final curve with the new Set NURBS Order and Set NURBS Weight nodes. Node Tools Node tools inputs are remembered between operator invocations. Node tool inputs can now be assigned in Python. Performance Internal fields pre-evaluation deduplication. Face corner evaluation is now avoided in some sampling nodes. Preferences: configure a new call stack depth limit for Geometry Nodes. Other New in: Collection Children node for accessing all the Child Objects and Collections of a Collection as a list. New in: Principal Component Analysis nodes. 3 new building block nodes associated with Merge by Distance for expanded control over merging. Node group inputs: new Scene Frame default input type.

Object sockets can now have Self Object as a default input mode. Access the internal attribute which tells instances what geometry to instance with the new Instance Reference node. Extract a single component of a geometry or edit it in a new simpler way with the Get Geometry Component node. Closures can now be called recursively. Display data-block name in Viewer Node. Data-blocks sockets can now be compared to each other and to None. Bone Info: New “Exists” output.

CYCLES

Cached In

On scenes with many image textures, the new Texture Cache significantly reduces memory usage and startup time by automatically generating smaller, optimized texture files that load only the tiles and resolutions needed for rendering.

Texture Cache Off Texture Cache On

Attic Bistro Junkshop

0100020003000400050006000 Memory usage Unit: MB

CYCLES

Easy Savings

One toggle, loads of memory savings.

Under Performance → Texture Cache, enable Auto Generate or click Generate. A corresponding .tx file will be generated for each image and automatically updated whenever the image file is modified.

Memory savings and performance improvements are highly scene-dependent. Using Texture Cache comes at the cost of a small rendering performance impact and increased disk space usage.

CYCLES & EEVEE

Paper-thin wall

Render physically accurate thin materials such as paper, leaves, and window sheets with the new Thin Wall mode in the Principled BSDF node.

When Thin Wall is enabled, the surface is treated as a slab with its layers mirrored around the base, and the thickness is assumed to be zero.

Render by Christopher 3D.

This new mode provides a more accurate approximation of thin transparent and translucent materials, combining reflection and transmission for thin glass surfaces, and diffuse and translucent scattering for thin subsurface materials.

More Cycles & Rendering

EEVEE

Eevolved

Blender 5.2 LTS is a major release for EEVEE, addressing long-standing usability issues from the transition to the EEVEE Next project architecture.

What’s New

Behind the Screen

The new Backface option under Screen Tracing controls how rays that intersect the back faces of visible geometry are handled.

When enabled, intersections with back faces are treated as valid hits instead of misses.

This can reduce light leaking when using screen-space global illumination, and lets you fine-tune the appearance of global illumination. It affects both Screen Space GI and Fast GI Approximation.

Double Sided Single Sided Disabled (Compatibility Mode) Both front and back faces contribute to global illumination (slider at 1.0) Only front faces affect global illumination (slider at 0.0) Use it for compatibility with old renders.

What Got Better

ASSETS ♥ ONLINE

Essentials On Demand

Dozens of new parametric materials, compositing effects, HDR world backgrounds, Geometry Nodes setups, and many more assets have been added to the Essentials library.

The best part? Blender isn’t any larger. These new assets are hosted online, ready for download whenever you need them.

Make Them Yours

Watch this demo on customizing online assets by Simon from Blender Studio

Host Your Own

Need more? Host your own or add your favorite creator’s online asset libraries.

Smart indexing makes browsing thousands of assets a breeze.

Keep your assets up to date with a single click.

Add your own online repository in the new Asset Libraries preferences section.

COMPOSITOR

New nodes, unlimited possibilities.