Final Fantasy XIV's Next Expansion Announced, Arriving in January
Final Fantasy XIV's next major expansion, Evercold, has been announced and is set to launch in January 2027, approximately two and a half years after Dawntrail's release.
The next major expansion for Final Fantasy XIV is just around the corner, and it's not even the craziest announcement from last weekend's Fan Fest!
It's no secret that for a very long time, Final Fantasy XIV has been one of the longest-running MMORPGs in the genre, and not only that—it's also one of the most popular titles in the neighborhood when it comes to this type of game. While the game has been experiencing its usual drop in active player count, this weekend we got the announcement that will definitely bring quite a few players back to the game—the reveal of the game's next expansion! The new expansion will be called Evercold and is expected to arrive this coming January, roughly two and a half years since the release of Dawntrail, as long as the expansion doesn't get delayed. But it's important to note that this wasn't even the most insane announcement from the first evening of this year's Fan Fest.
Among the things announced alongside the Evercold trailer is that the raid series accompanying the expansion will be a collaboration with none other than Evangelion, the iconic anime series. For now, this is still a relatively early announcement about it (and considering all the content surrounding Nier, I think this collaboration is in good hands). One of the more earth-shattering announcements of the evening undoubtedly came in the form of a port of the game to Nintendo Switch 2. Yoshi-P pulled out a Switch 2 unit running the game with what appears to be his lalafel character in Limsa Lominsa, without showing much gameplay yet, but the port is set to release in August along with a free month beta for the game (you can see the announcement at 3:11:50 in the video below). So what's keeping this port from being truly amazing? The game on Switch will require a different subscription from the one for other platforms, so if you're playing on one of the other platforms where the game is available, in order to play the game on Switch 2 as well, you'll need to pay a bit more to also play on Nintendo's platform. However, the game will not require Nintendo's online subscription to work online.
Evercold has quite a few expectations to meet. While the expansion announcement received plenty of applause during Fan Fest, general player reviews of the last expansion, Dawntrail, weren't particularly impressive. It's unclear if this expansion caused players to leave, but it seems the development team has the drive to get Evercold out as soon as possible, so as mentioned earlier, if there are no delays, we can expect this expansion as early as January 2027. What do you think about this news? Are you looking forward to the game's next expansion? Or are you planning to try the game on Switch 2? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!