They could just make it sixth edition.
Apparently some previous editions were close enough to one another that it was not impossible to convert a character from one to the other. The 2024 core rulebooks are said to be backwards-compatible with all 5th edition products, which would seem to suggest we'll be getting more of a rebalancing than a significant shift in the rules systems.
Indeed, Monsters of the Multiverse is something of a revision of Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. This did make significant changes to some monster stat blocks and player races, but the changes were still very much within the framework of a familiar system. With just a little explanation about how ability score increases are no longer determined by race, a time-traveler could hand that book to someone in 2014 who had just gotten the brand new 5th edition core rulebooks and they'd have no trouble running stuff with those monsters.
Now, I did buy Monsters of the Multiverse. I use a free online database tool for running my games (I'm not sure it's totally legally kosher, but it's been around long enough that I have to believe WotC would have had them shut down if it were a problem), but I still like to have the physical books (partially as a collector, partially out of fear of digital erasure, and partially out of an ethical sense that I should pay for the content I use). And so I will almost certainly get the new core rulebooks even if the changes are simple revisions, and not major redesigns.
This post is not a wishlist, but is based instead on hints that I think we've gotten from recent D&D releases.
Backgrounds:
Backgrounds are technically one of the big decisions you make when you create a new character, but next to race and class, their impact is pretty minor. In most cases, they boil down to two skill proficiencies, some languages or tools, and a backstory writing prompt.
However, starting with Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, WotC started playing around with the idea of making a background a more significant choice. Granted, if you weren't a spellcaster, the "guild spells" in that were pretty irrelevant, but it did expand things a bit.
More recently, the backgrounds detailed in the Heroes of Krynn unearthed arcana go a lot farther - granting free feats at level 1. This gives that background a pretty big impact on the character's actual power and capabilities.
Backgrounds always had background features, but they very rarely actually come into play, and are more of an opportunity for RP than a significant character ability. I suspect that backgrounds might get a bit more important.
Feats:
Feats are technically an optional rule. But I don't know of any tables where they're not allowed. I think that the initial design for 5E was to make sure that new players didn't get bogged down in the complexities that feats provide.
But I think that the 5th edition design is also one that allows players to ignore feats and still have a powerful character. My artificer, for instance, did get one feat for being a variant human, but will likely simply spend his first two ASIs maxing out his intelligence and his last three maxing his constitution (assuming that campaign ever really starts playing regularly).
WotC is clearly playing around with more complexity with feats - giving some level prerequisites and some having other feat prerequisites. Given that you're giving up ASIs to get feats, they need to be quite powerful to justify themselves... unless they change the rules and allow you to get feats and ASIs.
Both recent UAs - Heroes of Krynn and Giant Options - have had feats like these. I wonder if we're going to see them enshrined and more commonly.
Gold:
Way back in the day, gold was XP. The gold you earned was how you determined if you leveled up. The original vision for D&D was one of mercenaries out to make money, rather than altruistically saving the world. Indeed, you can see how characters of all sorts of alignments (including evil) make a bit more sense when the it's more about some rough people trying to plunder treasure from deep dungeons.
These days, though, there's not a ton of guidance on what to do with gold after a certain threshold.
Essentially, once your Paladins, Fighters, and/or Clerics (or Armorer Artificers) have gotten their expensive plate armor, more gold is not all that useful in a mechanical sense.
Yes, the players can spend gold on stuff that doesn't increase their player power, but I think with the exception of wizards who need gold to copy spells (though the cost here scales linearly while gold acquisition as per the DMG I think is more exponential - 50 gold to copy a first level spell at level 2 is a lot more expensive than 450 gold to copy a 9th level spell at level 18) and I suppose anyone who favors spells with costly material components (also wizards, though this can include clerics, druids, and such,) in general you hit a point where your character doesn't really need more money. If I play a Soulknife Rogue, once I have Studded Leather - something I can probably get before I even get high enough level to pick a subclass - I really don't have much to spend it on.
Now, perhaps magic items are the way. Plenty of campaigns have players spend money to buy magic items, but the guidance in the rules is pretty vague on this. I actually accidentally allowed my party's fighter/paladin to buy a set of mithral plate armor for cheaper than normal plate given that the price range in Xanathar's Guide to Everything based on its rarity allowed it to go for less than 1500g.
I do understand why you might not want to make it so explicit - if you want to run a game with a relatively low number of magic items, you don't want players saying "hey, I should be able to get this for 3000 gold!"
Again, I find myself comparing this with Starfinder, where everything has a cost (in Credits rather than gold, because sci-fi) and players are expected to constantly be going to the store to upgrade their weapons and armor.
I don't know that we need a system quite so explicit in its pricing, but I think it would be cool to have more clear options for gold expenditures. Perhaps it would be good to have more details on what a party's headquarters could have in it - not just "you have a keep" but "you have a keep, and here are things you can do in that keep and spend to install there that have these explicit gameplay benefits."
Legendary Actions versus Multiple Reactions:
If you took a look at the "Vecna the Archlich" stat block in the recent Vecna Dossier, despite being the most powerful, legendary archlich in D&D lore, Vecna does not actually have legendary actions. Instead, he gets three reactions per round (one per turn).
What I find interesting is that it's pretty difficult to gauge his actual power level because of this - normally, a lich's meat-and-potatoes legendary action is the ability to cast a cantrip, so you basically get three additional ray of frost casts per round - which amounts to a total of 12d8 damage if they all hit, which is not nothing.
Vecna pumps out a lot of damage on his turn, but the thing that makes these really nasty is that he can go a pretty long way to shutting down the party's spellcasters.
In a way, I think that extra reactions might be more powerful than legendary actions, as they're much more flexible as to the timing. And while Vecna's "legendary reactions" are both truly reactive - a counterspell and a defensive teleport - you could imagine giving other legendary monsters more straightforward attacks that they can make as reactions.
Now, is this a blanket change or just new "technology?" After all, the Monstrous Compendium Volume 1 gave us the Nightmare Beast, which has traditional legendary actions, as well as the Eldritch Lich, whose Far Realm Step is a bit more like Vecna's Fell Rebuke (though still limited to one per round). Perhaps on a case-by-case basis we'll see more traditional legendary actions or these new multi-reactions.
Short Rest vs Long Rest:
One thing we've seen a lot of in new features is that we're getting a lot more thing recharging on long rests, rather than short rests, but with more charges.
The most straightforward example being the Dragonborn's breath weapon. In the PHB, you get this once per short rest. But in Fizban's, which gave us the revised Metallic, Chromatic, and Gem dragonborn, you now get a number of uses of your breath weapon equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.
If you figure you get typically one short rest per day, that means that it's about even in tier 1, and then just gets better as you get to higher levels (unless you take lots of short rests).
A lot of classes are also pretty focused on short rests - Fighters, Monks, and especially Warlocks are big fans of short rests, typically regaining their resources on short rests. This allows them to be a little less conservative with their class resources if they're in a situation where the party can stop for a bit in the middle of the day.
Now, I could imagine simply doubling things like ki points or charges on action surge (or superiority dice) but making them recharge on a long rest. However, as I see it, kind of the whole thing with warlocks is the weird way their spell slots work.
Granted, when they start getting into the high-level spells, it's a bit more like other spellcasters. Indeed, you could argue that what really makes Warlocks Warlocks is their eldritch invocations - the heavy customization that they can use to make up for not having the extensive spell slots that, say, a Wizard has (Eldiritch Blast on its own is only a little better than Fire Bolt - basically just because it's force instead of fire damage - but invocations like Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Lance of Lethargy, etc. make it much more powerful).
Fully getting rid of the short rest would be a pretty radical change. Even if you're not a class that gets resources back on a short rest, the ability to heal up after a tough fight or other kind of encounter that left you banged up is a pretty important tool for players, and it saves the healer(s) resources - if the Ranger can get healed up to full using hit dice, the Cleric won't need to burn a couple spell slots on cure wounds.
Still, if we got something like Healing Surges from 4th edition or some other feature that let players heal themselves up, while also giving those short rest classes more resources to work with, perhaps we'll see short rests going the way of the dodo.
Still Two Years Out:
All of this speculation is, ultimately, a bit early. There are still several 5th edition books that are slated for release, and two years before we're going to get the new core books.
Likewise, the ideas that we're seeing WotC put out here are experiments, and depending on how they work out, they could either decide they work well and can be more prevalent in the game, or they might find that the ideas don't totally work out and either walk them back or revise them (see the way that they've adjusted how alignment on stat blocks works).
At this point we have a good sense of what's coming this year, but there's all of 2023 to see before we get to the year the new core rulebooks come out.
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