At State of Unreal, Epic Games not only showed a glimpse of UE6, but also highlighted several new features for Unreal Engine 5.8.
State of Unreal 2026 is now behind us, and it provided a look ahead at the future of Epic’s software that lasted a good two hours.
In addition to a relatively brief look at Unreal Engine 6, the developers talked extensively about what is likely to be the last major update, UE 5.8—we’ll walk you through all the key announcements from the keynote in the quick rundown below.
Unreal Engine 6: The Rough Timeline Is Set
Epic Games has confirmed the roadmap for Unreal Engine 6: According to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, the next generation of the engine will merge UE5 with the pipeline currently being developed in parallel for Fortnite—featuring the Verse programming model, open standards for portable content, and deeper AI integration via MCP.
According to Epic Games, Early Access is still scheduled for late 2027.
Unreal Engine 5.8 as the last major update?
Regarding Unreal Engine 5.8, Epic Games announced on stage, among other things, a new Lumen mode for 60 fps on Nintendo Switch 2 and PC, as well as several systems such as MegaLights.
According to the studio, optimized shader compilation is said to have reduced the number of shaders in Fortnite alone by 68 percent. Furthermore, there are reportedly no plans for another major UE5 release after version 5.8 for the time being—Epic Games is keeping a potential update to Unreal Engine 5.9 open as a possibility.
AI Integrations and Lore
With UE 5.8, Epic Games is also introducing an experimental MCP plugin that allows models like Claude to connect directly to UE projects.
According to Epic Games, these models are designed to do much more than just copy and paste: They are meant to understand specific Unreal Engine workflows and collaborate independently within them; which model is used for this purpose is up to the studios themselves.
Under the name “Lore,” Epic Games has also introduced an open-source version control system that is now available for free.
According to Epic Games, traditional version control systems typically specialize in source code or large binary files. Lore, on the other hand, is designed to cover both scenarios and is optimized for distributed repositories for very large teams.
The Simpsons Are Coming to UEFN
After Star Wars content attracted nearly eight million players to their own islands within 72 hours last May, according to Epic Games, “The Simpsons” is the next major license to follow. According to the studio, a dedicated toolkit featuring characters and locations from Springfield will be available to UEFN developers via the IP program later this year.
