@overstop ,
The developers announce new versions when they come out – there will be a post in the Announcements section of the forum, and the official download page will be updated; about 2 weeks after the release, auto-update will be triggered. The developers don’t pre-announce “next version will be coming out in XXX weeks, with new features YYY and ZZZ”, so asking us when the next version will be is not going to help; that’s why @Alan-Kilborn told you months ago that there is no published roadmap.
As a reminder, this isn’t a corporate product, where there is a big paid team, whose primary goal in their job is to make Notepad++ better on a regular schedule. Rather, it’s an all-volunteer effort. The primary developer has a “day job”, and Notepad++ is just his passion-driven side project; he has a few other code contributors who help make changes, but it’s all volunteer-run, in their free time, with no fixed or guaranteed schedule.