Bethesda Game Studios has confirmed that Fallout 5 is in development. Studio director Todd Howard shared the news on the studio's official X account, writing that "Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination." The project is in preproduction, the early stage where a game's basic design and direction are decided before the team starts building it in earnest. The Verge

The confirmation comes more than ten years after Fallout 4 launched in November 2015. Howard said in 2022 that Fallout 5 would come after The Elder Scrolls VI, and he repeated that plan in a December 2025 interview with Game Informer. Game Informer That order has not changed. Howard said The Elder Scrolls VI is the studio's main focus right now, with most of the team working on it.

Howard also said The Elder Scrolls VI will use the same technology platform as Fallout 5. This is the first time Bethesda has said outright that the two games share an underlying engine, the core software that runs a game. Bethesda has used and updated its own engine, called the Creation Engine, across several generations of consoles. Choosing to use one shared engine for both of its biggest role-playing game franchises is a deliberate decision.

The Fallout franchise is growing beyond Bethesda's own project. A separate new Fallout game is in development at Obsidian Entertainment, the studio that made Fallout: New Vegas in 2010. Updated versions of both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are also being made, though neither has a release date. Bethesda's broader release schedule is busy: Oblivion Remastered launches on Nintendo Switch 2 on August 11, Fallout 4 comes to Switch 2 in 2026, and DOOM: The Dark Ages' Revelations expansion came out on July 7. Fallout 76, the online multiplayer entry, still gets regular new content, including a July preview of C.A.M.P. Pets and monthly shop updates. The Verge Kotaku

Howard said the Starfield franchise "remains an important part of our future." Starfield launched in 2023 as Bethesda's first brand-new game series in over twenty years. No further details about a sequel or additional content were given.

Microsoft bought Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021. That makes this the first main Fallout game developed entirely under Microsoft's ownership. Bethesda now works inside a company that makes the Xbox and runs the Game Pass subscription service, which gives it its own reasons to push certain games, platforms, and release timing. Those pressures may shape how Fallout 5 is developed and launched, though no specifics have been shared. The corporate setup is quite different from when Fallout 4 came out under an independent ZeniMax.

The Bethesda announcements arrived the same week that ZeniMax employees held a rally in Maryland to protest layoffs. The games being celebrated in these announcements are made by developers, some of whom are dealing with job insecurity. That contrast is worth stating plainly rather than glossing over. The Verge

Bethesda is spreading the Fallout brand across multiple studios, an approach similar to how Microsoft has handled other game series it acquired. Bethesda Game Studios makes the main numbered games. Obsidian, a different Microsoft-owned studio, makes a side Fallout game, just as it did with New Vegas in 2010. Other teams handle the updated re-releases. This portfolio approach keeps the franchise visible during the long gaps between major releases.

The technology decision carries some weight here. Sharing one engine between Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 suggests Bethesda is combining its tools rather than keeping separate ones for each franchise. This fits a broader trend in the game industry, where development costs and team sizes have grown large enough that building one shared platform makes financial and practical sense. Whether it leads to real improvements in areas where Bethesda's engine has been criticized, such as character behavior, animation, or how smoothly the game loads its worlds, will depend on details Bethesda has not shared.

Because Fallout 5 is still in preproduction, a release is likely years away. The Elder Scrolls VI, despite being the main focus, has no announced release window either. Both franchises operate on timelines that reflect how large and complex modern open-world games have become, with a single title often taking five to seven years and hundreds of developers to complete. The last main Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, came out in 2011. The gap between it and the next one, whenever that arrives, will be the longest in the franchise's history.