A look back at 2025 and what to look forward to in 2026

2025 was an extremely impactful and productive year for the contributors of O3DE. There was a strong focus on usability and performance of the engine. This focus resulted in smaller binaries, much faster debugging iteration times, optimized memory usage, highly reduced occurrences of crashes and hard locks, and higher performance of Atom (O3DE’s renderer). Contributors also improved compatibility, performance, and stability for iOS, Android, and AR/VR/XR. 

Here are some of the technical highlights: 

Sig-Content:

• TrackView stabilization and quality of life improvements
• Asset Processor improvements for predictability and performance
• Add initial support for an external crash-reporting system using the CrashPad library 
• Many scripting optimizations and stability fixes (Lua, Script Canvas)
• Add support for Optick, Superluminal, and Tracy profilers as optional gems
• Resolved several issues with drag and drop across the editor

Sig-Core:

• Converted core engine libraries (AzCore, AzFramework and AzToolsFramework) to be built as shared libraries rather than static. This provided a reduction in size for compiled binaries and the debug symbol database on all platforms, up to 50+% reduction. Also reduces iteration times when debugging by several order of magnitude, particularly on Linux (from minutes to seconds)
• Added VS 2026 support
• Reduced size of installer binaries for windows (26%) and Debian package for Linux (40%)
• Added Compatibility with the C++ 20 standard

Sig-Simulation:

• Added the new SimulationInterfaces Gem, which implements standard ROS 2 simulation interfaces, replacing the previous ROS 2 implementation
• Performance improvements and simplifications to many of the robotics templates
• The ROS2 gem has been restructured into multiple smaller gems to improve modularity and maintainability.

Sig-Graphics-Audio:

• Full Multi-GPU support
• SubPass support (40% rendering bandwidth improvement) 
  • Supported by DirectX, Vulkan, and Metal
• GeometryView, Introduced a new class called GeometryView that helps to de-duplicate data between drawItems and drawPackets, as these now hold a pointer to the respective GeometryView, making both DrawPackets and DrawItems smaller in size and thus more cache friendly. Most importantly, it allows index and stream buffers and buffer views to be modified at runtime without having to rebuild DrawPackets/DrawItems.
• Function/Specialization shader constants – Add support for specialization constants for shader options. When using specialization constants there’s no need to create a shader variant, the values for shader options are baked at runtime. Also added batching of shader variants as part of the work for using specialization constants. Supported on DX12, Vulkan and Metal.
• Vertex color support – Add vertex color support to the BasePBR, StandardPBR and EnhancedPBR materials. Vertex color can be combined with the base color using a factor and a blending method that can be configured in the material. Vertex color can be enable/disable from the material
• The Material Pipeline has received several changes in order to enable for supporting multiple material types with Ray Tracing for future future releases
• Over 100 fixes and small optimizations

AR/VR/XR:

• Improved the installation process for the Meta Quest Mobile SDK for O3DE. Installation is automatic now.

Sig-Docs:

• Docs now make use of Hugo’s module system for the API docs, as part of the initiative to make docs easier to contribute to. Gone are the days of giant PRs in the o3de.org repository to update the API docs. 

Sig-Build:

• Many improvements to the windows and linux installation process (prebuilt packages)
• Ported AR process from Jenkins to Github Actions.
• Many optimizations to improve build times locally, and when using AR

O3DE Community Contributions:

O3DE’s community plays a vital role in the project’s growth and long-term success. Contributions of every size are valuable. Our global community was so active that we ended the year with a total of 112,354 downloads which is a 187.8% year-over-year growth in 2025. We thank everyone for their contributions but also would like to highlight and thank leading contributors – Nicholas Lawson, Jan Hanca and Michał Pełka. 

O3DE on the Road

O3DE participated in more than 10 industry events across the world this year. From  AWE in Long Beach and FOSDEM in Brussels to ROSCon in Singapore and SIGGRAPH in Vancouver. Additionally, we had a strong presence at Open Source Summit in North America, Europe, and India! 

If you missed these events, you can get a glimpse of these experiences in the blogs below. From a feature in a keynote at OSSummit EU by Kimberly McGuire (O3DE Community Member and Independent Robotist) a feature from a keynote at OSSummit India by Arpit Joshipura, GM of Networking and Edge at the Linux Foundation.

• OSSummit EU
• OSSummit India
• OSSummit NA
• ROSCon 2025
• SIGGRAPH

Open 3D Connect:

Throughout 2025, the O3DE community curated 9 Open 3D Connect sessions. One of which is a  Connect meeting video by Travis Boatman (CEO), Lloyd Tullues (CTO), and Peter Geist (Art Director) from Carbonated Inc. that demonstrates the impact many of the 2025 technical improvements have had for anyone using O3DE for development.

• Anton Michels (Graphics Research Engineer (IC6/Principal) at Meta Reality Labs)
• Gaian Helmers (President at Genome Studios, Inc.)
• Galib Arrieta (Open Source Developer – 3D Graphics For O3DE at SkyeRocke LLC and a long-time contributor to O3DE)
• Guillaume Haerinck (Tools Engineer at Cloud Imperium Games)
• Matteo Grasso (Founder of DIGIBL Studio – Digital Basil Leaves)
• Porcupine Factory
• Reece Hagan (Game Developer at Tuyuji)
• Steve Pham (Sr. Software Development Engineer and creator of O3DE’s mascot Odie)

As we look ahead to 2026, O3DE’s continued growth has been and always will be powered by our community. From technical improvements to events and meetups, every contribution helps strengthen the project while fostering a safe space for creativity and collaboration. We are excited to build on this momentum and explore new ways to grow together!