Blender 5.0 launches with ACES color, enhanced rendering, and tighter VFX integration

The free open-source Blender project has finally released version 5.0 with a wide set of updates across color, rendering, simulation, and geometry. The new ACES based color pipeline adds native support for wide gamut and HDR spaces such as ACEScg and Rec.2020, enabling accurate delivery for modern film and VFX work. Cycles gains a Render Time pass, a Portal Depth light pass, and improved OptiX denoising, while smoke and fire simulations now run on NanoVDB for better volumetric quality and memory use.

Blender 5.0 also expands its handling of complex scenes through support for massive buffers in .blend files, allowing much denser geometry. Geometry Nodes introduces new volumetric workflows with OpenVDB and signed distance field grids. Pipeline tools see upgrades as well, with the compositor node tree now reusable inside Sequencer strips and a new asset shelf offering drag and drop presets including vignette, grain, and chromatic aberration.

The release raises hardware requirements, dropping support for Intel Macs and older GPUs from around 2014, and updates the Python API, which will require many addons to be revised. Files saved in 5.x may not open in older versions, so developers recommend keeping Blender 4.5 installed during the transition.