Fallout 5 exists, but only on the drawing board: Bethesda Game Studios has said the next numbered Fallout is in preproduction and being built on a new engine, while most of the studio works on The Elder Scrolls VI. With the series trending again in the UK this week, the studio’s own words are the only firm ground, and they are fewer than the online chatter suggests.
The clearest statement came in a July 17 post signed by Bethesda Game Studios. “Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction,” it said, and earlier in the same note the studio called the game “our long-range destination.” No title art, release window or platforms were given.
What Bethesda has confirmed
- Stage: preproduction, the planning phase before a full team builds the game.
- Technology: Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls VI are both being made on Creation Engine 3, a shared platform the studio says it has been building since Starfield launched.
- Priority: The Elder Scrolls VI is the studio’s “primary development focus today,” with most of the team on it.
- Other Fallout work: remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are in progress, with no dates; Obsidian Entertainment is working with Bethesda on a separate new Fallout project; and Fallout 76 gets a Raven Rock expansion next year, a prequel story to Fallout 3.
The same post said Fallout 4 has passed 35 million copies sold and that Fallout Shelter has more than 250 million players. Bethesda skipped its usual Fallout Day broadcast this year and is instead planning a live Fallout Day in Washington, D.C., in 2027 for the series’ 30th anniversary.
How long the wait already is
The gap between numbered Bethesda Fallout games is the part fans feel most. Fallout 3 arrived in 2008 and Fallout 4 in 2015, seven years apart. It has now been 11 years since Fallout 4, and Fallout 5 has only reached preproduction. If Bethesda follows its own stated order, The Elder Scrolls VI ships first, which puts a new mainline Fallout behind a game that itself has no release date. Any Fallout 5 date you see online today is guesswork, not a Bethesda announcement.
What it means for players right now
In practice, the near-term Fallout calendar is the remasters, Obsidian’s project, the Raven Rock expansion for Fallout 76 and more television. Production on season 3 of the Fallout series is already underway, Bethesda said, and an unscripted Fallout Shelter show is in the works; that show now has a date, as we reported when Prime Video set a January 13 premiere and a $1 million prize for Fallout Shelter: The Experiment.
The bigger release on gamers’ calendars this month comes from another studio entirely; our timeline of how GTA 6 reached its November 19 date shows how long a blockbuster can sit between reveal and release. More studio news sits on our gaming page.
The next fixed point Bethesda has given is Fallout’s 30th anniversary in 2027, when Fallout Day goes live in Washington, D.C.
Further reading
Image: William Tung, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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