Blender recently released the Beta of Blender 5.1 currently scheduled for full release on March 11, 2026. The release has several new features and today we highlight some of the best new features (at least in my own opinion). In addition to the new features highlighted below, Blender 5.1 also has several “under the hood” improvements to performance and stability.
- Vulkan *SHOULD* Be the new default graphics device on Windows and Linux (in my case it wasn’t, so this may have been bumped to 5.2)
- New and excellent search functionality in preferences
- New quad view viewport improvements including the ability to modify all 4 viewports at once
- New snapping option – Face snapping
- Major grease pencil improvements – new stroke and fill functionality – new hole cutting capability
- New geometry nodes including new volumetrics nodes and the new Raycast feature (see link for demo below)
Key Links
You can see a demonstration of (in my opinion) the best new features coming to Blender 5.1 in the new beta in action in the video below.