Unreal Engine 6 roadmap — Nanite Plus, lighting overhaul, AI characters

Epic published the UE6 technical roadmap. Three headline features and one quiet inclusion that matters more than any of them.

Epic published the Unreal Engine 6 technical roadmap at GDC. Three headline features: Nanite Plus geometry, full lighting pipeline overhaul replacing Lumen, and a built-in AI character system based on Llama 4 derivatives. UE6 ships in mid-2027 with first AAA shipping titles in 2028.

The quiet inclusion that matters more: a redesigned mod and tool pipeline with first-class WebGPU export. That means UE6 titles can ship browser-playable demos out of the same project file as the desktop and console builds — the kind of distribution flexibility that historically required custom export work.