15 years after the dystopian novel, Divergent, took the world of young adult literature by storm, author Veronica Roth is returning once again to the city of Chicago and the factions where Beatrice Prior’s story first began.
On April 18, 2026, at New York Book Con, Veronica Roth announced that The Sixth Faction (billed to readers on the cover as “A New Divergent Series”) will be available for fans to read in October 2026. Here’s the twist: The Sixth Faction is not a sequel or prequel to any of the books in the original Divergent trilogy, but a total re-imagining of the story from the ground up. Rather than choosing to live in Dauntless (one of the five factions that exist within the world), as she does in Divergent, Beatrice Prior will make a different decision, one that will alter the course of her fate and, undoubtedly, the fates of other characters in the series as well.
The choice to tell a story from another character’s perspective, especially in the Young Adult book world, is not entirely unheard of. Roth herself wrote a collection set within the world of Divergent told from Tobias Eaton’s perspective called Four: A Divergent Collection and Stephanie Meyer wrote Midnight Sun, the events of Twilight told from Edward’s perspective that was released in 2020. That said, the choice to totally rewrite a story in a butterfly effect style is certainly a bold one. It might give the author the chance to “fix” past mistakes, patch up plot holes, and potentially flesh out characters that they didn’t get the chance to in the past. In the case of The Sixth Faction, it also brings up some questions.
How different will Beatrice be if she chooses to live in a faction that isn’t Dauntless? Will Tobias and other fan-favorite characters make an appearance at all? How different will the outcome of the story be when compared to the original? How will fans feel when a plot point or character they love is changed (for better or worse) by Roth’s new vision of the story?
Only time will tell, as The Sixth Faction will be published in October 2026.