Coming out of State of Unreal 2026 last week there was some massive news including the announcement of Unreal Engine 6, the release of Unreal Engine 5.8 and the first release of the new free and open source Lore version control system. Not mentioned in the State of Unreal address, but mentioned in the accompanying blog post there was this massive bombshell:
The path from here to there
UE6 converges two threads we’ve been running in parallel: UE5 for high-end stand-alone game and content development, and Unreal Editor for Fortnite as the live environment where the new programming model has been getting battle-tested.
As UE5 and UEFN merge into one editor, you will be able to ship traditional games and projects exactly as you do today. You’ll be able to ship directly in Fortnite, or ship to your own ecosystem, and optionally, make it compatible with ours. You’ll have an easy path from one to another.
Our philosophy through this transition is to bring existing projects along, not to force a hard break. Studios shipping on UE5 today should expect a manageable, and clear path forward when UE6 is ready for them. To allow for this, Actors and Blueprints will be in early versions of UE6. Eventually, these will be deprecated when the new framework is sufficiently mature, and you’ll have conversion tools to move projects from one framework to the other.
We’re targeting a Unreal Engine 6 Early Access release at the end of 2027, with the full release of UE6 coming 12-18 months later. In the meantime, a new UE6 development stream is now on GitHub, publicly visible, just like the UE5 stream has always been. The Verse language implementation has moved out to be visible here, though it’s not intended for general adoption at this point.
Any remaining UE5 changes will merge to UE6 to not get lost, but not vice versa. In addition, Fortnite development will be attached to the UE6 stream so you can see all ongoing work live and cherry-pick changes as needed. However, this stream is not meant to be any kind of Alpha: it exists just to be transparent with where we’re going. And while we aren’t currently planning another official UE5 release after 5.8, we’re reserving the option to release a 5.9, if needed.
The highlighted and bold portion being the most pertinent part. With the release of Unreal Engine 6 after the addition of the Verse Programming Language and the new Scene Graph system, both the Blueprint programming language and the tried and true Actor approach to scene creation will be deprecated. What exactly does deprecated mean? Initially it means no new development and eventually removal. More or less it means once UE6 ships and Verse/Scene Graph are production ready, Actor and Blueprints are essentially dead men walking! Don’t worry though, it should take several years to get to that point.
Key Links
Scene Graph (UEFN) Documentation
State of Unreal 2026 on YouTube
You can learn more about UE6, the deprecation of Blueprints and Actor and what it will mean going forward in the video below.