Rocket League has been running on Unreal Engine 3 since 2015. That is not a typo. While the entire industry moved to UE4, then UE5, Psyonix kept building on a 2006-era engine. Now they are finally making the leap, and they are not going to UE4. They are not going to UE5. They are going straight to Unreal Engine 6.
Epic Games revealed Unreal Engine 6 live at the RLCS Paris Major 2026 finals on May 24, using Rocket League as the first public showcase of the new engine. Psyonix confirmed the transition at the event, making Rocket League the first game in the world to be shown publicly running on UE6.
That is a flex you do not see every day.
The announcement dropped during Karmine Corp's run to the Paris Major championship. The short teaser shows noticeably shinier cars and stadiums, though specific details on what UE6 brings to the table technically are still sparse. No release timeline for the update was announced.
The community lost it. The official Rocket League tweet, "New Era. New Engine. This is Rocket League," pulled 13 million likes in under 24 hours. Geoff Keighley's separate tweet about the UE6 reveal hit 17 million likes and 4.8 billion views. That is a lot of people who care about what engine a game about rocket-powered cars uses.
The reaction splits pretty cleanly between people genuinely excited about better graphics and people losing it over the fact that Psyonix skipped two entire engine generations at once. Both groups have a point. Rocket League's cartoony style has masked just how dated the technical foundation was, and a UE6 rebuild could open up a lot of creative space for Psyonix to work with.
Psyonix has not said whether this means a visual-only overhaul, a full engine rebuild, or something in between. That distinction matters a lot for a game with 11 years of live-service infrastructure built on top of the old engine. For now it is a teaser and a logo, which is still more than anyone expected from an esports major finals.