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Compatibility Changes

Some of the changes in Blender significantly break backward compatibility or forward compatibility.

Here you can find the major breaking changes introduced by the recent releases of Blender, as well as the ones planned for future releases. These are collected from the individual release notes and design tasks.

Upcoming Releases

Blender 5.0 — Nov 2025

Remove Big-Endian Support

This type of architecture is virtually nonexistent nowadays on Blender hardware targets. It has not been officially supported for years, and the current code is essentially untested on these platforms.

IDProperties

Several changes are proposed to the IDProperties/Custom Data system, which would largely affect their usages through the API (make all IDProperty statically typed, separate user-defined and system-defined IDProperties).

UI API

In particular, several features from the UIList may be removed.

Blender 4.5 LTS — Jul 2025

Deprecate Big-Endian Support

This type of architecture is virtually nonexistent nowadays on Blender hardware targets. It has not been officially supported for years, and the current code is essentially untested on these platforms.

This release will be the last one able to open (very!) old blendfiles saved on Big-Endian architectures, and will warn the user about it when such a file is loaded.

Blender 4.4 — Mar 2025 (alpha)

Cycles

  • On Linux, the minimum ROCm version required to use HIP on AMD GPUs has increased to 6.0.

Python API

  • Code defining custom __init__/__new__ functions for sub-classes of Blender-defined types (like Operator, PropertyGroup, RenderEngine...) must now call the parent matching function.
  • The bpy.types.Sequence and all related types got renamed to bpy.types.Strip. See the full list here.

Published Releases

Blender 4.3 — Nov 2024

Cycles

  • Support for AMD and Intel GPUs through the Metal backend on macOS has been removed.
  • The minimum driver version requirement for NVidia GPUs has been increased to 495.89
  • Support for Vega in Cycles AMD HIP backend has been removed

Grease Pencil

The Grease Pencil type of object has been rewritten to allow deeper changes, removing long standing limitations and facilitating future evolutions. Read about the Migration Process from previous versions. The new data model will be fully incompatible with previous Blender releases.

Brush Assets

The brush workflow has been redesigned to use global brush asset libraries. Brushes from previous versions need conversion.

Python API

The AttributeGroup type was split into one new type per attribute owner.

Blender 4.2 LTS — Jul 2024 - Jul 2026

EEVEE

The EEVEE render engine was completely rewritten. Read about the Migration Process from previous versions. Some platforms and hardware are not working as expected yet, see the Platform Compatibility section for details.

Compositor

The Compositor now supports GPU rendering. Due to this, a number of changes were done to the way the canvas is computed, and some nodes have been adapted to support both CPU and GPU. See the list of breaking changes.

Add-ons and Themes

Most add-ons that used to ship with Blender, are now available on the Extensions Platform where you can browse, install, and update them online from within Blender.

SSE4.2 CPU

On Windows and Linux a CPU with SSE4.2 is now required. This is supported since AMD Bulldozer (2011) and Intel Nehalem (2008).

Statically Typed IDProperties

System-defined and library-overridable IDProperties are now statically typed.

Blender 4.1 — Mar 2024

Auto Smooth

The "Auto Smooth" option has been replaced by a modifier node group asset.

Apple

macOS 11.2 (Big Sur) is now the minimum required version for Apple computers. This is required for the Metal backend to work correctly.

Libraries

Libraries have been upgraded to match VFX platform 2024.

Blender 4.0 — Nov 2023

Blend Files

The mesh format changes from previous versions are now included in the Blender file format. Blender 3.6 LTS can read files saved with 4.0, and will save meshes in a format compatible with older versions of Blender.

Unused Linked Data

Unused linked data is not kept anymore when saving and re-opening .blend files.

Graphics Cards

The minimum required OpenGL version has been increased to 4.3 for Linux and Windows. On macOS only Metal is supported now.

Support for Intel HD4000 series GPUs has been dropped.

Bone Collections

New bone collections replace both legacy numbered layers and bone groups.

Blender 3.6 LTS — Jun 2023 - Jun 2025

There are no significant compatibility changes in this release.

Archived Releases — 3.3 - 3.5
Blender 3.5 — Mar 2023

New Minimum Requirements

  • macOS
    • macOS 10.15 (Catalina) for Intel devices
    • macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) remain the minimum for for Apple Silicon.
  • Linux distribution with glibc 2.28, including:
    • Ubuntu 18.10
    • Debian 10 (Buster)
    • Fedora 29
    • RHEL 8 and derivatives CentOS, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux

Libraries

Libraries have been upgraded to match VFX platform 2023.

Blender 3.4 — Dec 2022

Nodes

The Transfer Attribute node has been split into three separate nodes.

The MixRGB nodes for Shader and Geometry Nodes are converted to the new "Mix Node" on loading. Files saved with the new node are not forward compatible with older versions of Blender.

Because of asset support in node editor 'Add' menus, node group asset files must be re-saved in version 3.4.

Blender 3.3 LTS — Sep 2022 - Sep 2024

There are no significant compatibility changes in this release.