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According to Wikipedia, even Backtrack 5 R3, the lastest version which was released on 8/2012 based on an old version of Ubuntu (10.04 Lucid) that won't be supported from April 2013. May be I'm a newbie, but I still wonder why a new version of Backtrack still based on an old Ubuntu version that was released more than two years ago.
Probably because they're concentrating on the tools and not the operating system. The O/S isn't hugely important as long as it is capable of running the tools (and is capable of being secured from an attack), and personally, I would prefer them to get the toolset right and correctly installed/integrated into the distro than to always chase the latest Linux release.
Having said that, I would hazard a guess that they're basing their O/S releases on the LTS versions of Ubuntu, and will probably be working on a 12.04 base for the next version.
pakchan's answer is probably correct.
For Ubuntu LTS versions are always <even #>.04 (so 8.04, 10.04, 12.04).
10.04 was the most recent Long Term Support (LTS) version when BT5 rolled out. 12.04 just came our in summer 2012. BT5r3 came out in Aug 2012, 12.04 was released in April but that makes pretty short timelines. Esp. considering that 12.04 uses a completely different default GUI (Unity).
My guess is that BT6 will be Ubuntu 12.04 based....though it's purely a guess.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases
So what's everyone think of the link posted above? Kali to replace BT - excited?