The Fifth Edition of The Greek New Testament (UBS5) is, like its predecessors, intended to enable its readers to read, understand, and translate the New Testament in its original language in as competent and skilled a manner as possible. To meet this aim, several improvements have been introduced that affect the whole New Testament:

• Punctuation, capitalization, and a few differences in spelling have been updated to match the NA28.
• Readings from the newly discovered Papyri 117–127 are included in the apparatus.
• Notes have been added wherever the text of selected modern translations (German, English, French, and Spanish) reflects a variant reading different from the main text of UBS5.
• The text is divided into meaningful sections (clauses and paragraphs), and the apparatus notes wherever a word, phrase, clause, or paragraph is grouped with a different segment of text than it was in UBS4.
• The entire edition was set in a new, aesthetically pleasing and extremely legible Greek character set.

Another major revision affects the Catholic Letters (James; 1 & 2 Peter; 1, 2 & 3 John; Jude). Thirty-three changes were made to the base text, which now conforms to that portion of the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) of the Greek New Testament. The text-critical apparatus for the Catholic Letters in the UBS5 was likewise updated to include additional witnesses and a revised selection of variants.