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.

roadmap

I don’t believe there is anything published.
Of course I’d be interested in seeing it, if it exists.

just a query if it was being worked upon.

I don’t think it is.
It’s open source, you could contribute!

tabs need an update. They look too outdated.

And that affects the text files you are editing, exactly how?

Perhaps you should join the party HERE.