Want to see Raider King content first? Add us as a preferred source.
On July 25 2026, Square Enix held a key note with information about the highly anticipated sixth expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, their award-winning MMORPG with 24 million registered players at the Berlin Fan Fest 2026. This key note began with an extended opening trailer for the upcoming expansion: Evercold.
The trailer, as well as Yoshi P’s explanation afterward, further established that a majority of the player’s time in Evercold will be spent in floating areas known as “Realmships” or “The Five Firmaments” above the frozen wastes of The Fourth.
One of the biggest highlights of the trailer though was the reveal of the game’s newest Tank Job: Bastian. This job wields two shields (officially called Skyltborgs) similar to Rhitahtyn sas Arvina from A Realm Reborn. Yoshi-P also surprised the audience by showing up dressed up as the job.
Bastion’s serve a Main Tank role and will start at Level 90 via a quest in Limsa Lominsa. While there weren’t specific details revealed about the job’s skills, it was stated that Bastions will be able to grant both themselves and party member’s defensive and curative boons.
After revealing the new Bastion Tank Job, focus turn to areas that the player will be able to explore in Evercold were shown to the audience. One highlighted in particular was the area above Naglfar, Realmship of Water, as well as the town that the player will be visiting on it: Falgarthr
While the songs in both the Naglfar and Falgarthr showcases are new tracks created for Evercold, Yoshi-P put special emphasis on how the Falgarthr theme in the trailer is not the one which will be used for the actual town and is instead a different track composed by Soken in a single night.
The next area showcased was Hringhorni, the Realmship of Fire. This Realmship is much more industrial looking than the previous one. The contrast between Hringhorni and Falgarthr helps showcase how even with the land below being completely frozen, the player will still be able to experience many different biomes in Evercold.
While only Hringhorni and Falgarthr had full showcase videos, concept art of the other Realmships was shown afterwards.
After speaking about the areas, Yoshi-P began to detail the MSQ structure changes coming in Evercold. This time around, players will be able to tackle different parts of the story in any order they like. While all players will start the expansion in Area A, they will be able to go to Areas B, C, and D and handle their story quests in any order. This will theoretically allow players to complete parts of the story in a different order from other players.
The order players complete areas will not have an effect on the story, and the audience was assured that the story wouldn’t drop any major spoilers while branching in different directions (not punishing players for doing a seemingly less-exciting branch first), but will allow players to handle their Evercold playthrough in any way they wish.
Due to players all being different levels when within the same area due to this new MSQ structure, the game will implementing a new Auto Content Balancing system which will automatically adjust the levels of enemies based on the levels of the player’s current party. During the key note it was stated that this system is hard to describe in words and will be best understood during gameplay later.
Dungeon rewards will also naturally be changing with this update, but the exact method in how they will be changed is still currently a mystery.
Next, more details were revealed about the game’s new weekly reward Adventurer Activity system. As previously detailed in the North American Fan Fest, this will be a weekly system where the player can complete duties and other challenges to earn reward points that can be used to upgrade their character and obtain higher item level equipment.
More details about this will be revealed at Tokyo Fan Fest.
The new seasons system was detailed next. Systems are simply a terminology change for each batch of two patches. There will be no additional fees of seasonal passes added to the game alongside them.
The new armory update was also shown again, which will allow the player to copy the item level of their best job onto any other job which has already reached max level. This system was implemented to allow players to experiment with trying different jobs in different duties with their friends
The character action skin system that was teased at the North American Fan Fest was the next feature showcased. This new system will allow players to pick and choose between different animations that will play during both normal skills like teleport as well as their various Job abilities during combat.
Three different animations for teleport were shown, with these animations varying from smoothly transitioning into light to violently being consumed by darkness as you move to a new location. It was also clarified that changing job animations will not have any effect on damage per second.
The new animations for general actions like teleport will be implemented with the launch of 8.0, with job animations being implemented at a later date. It was clarified that these new animations may have a slow rollout over the course of many patched due to the amount of effort that is being put into the system.
New character customization upgrades such as an improved color picker for eye, hair, and skin tone color will be added to the game in addition to customization of eye shadow and face paint layering. For further customization, players will now be able to turn off the brown spots on the noses of Lalafells, the war pain on the faces of Miqo’te, and change the horn designs of Au Ras.
One of the more controversial new features shown during fan fest is the addition of “Auto travel”, which will automatically walk the player to their next quest without any input. This feature will not be added at the launch of 8.0
While no details about the upcoming Evangelion Alliance Raids were revealed, the new raid difficulty between Normal and Savage difficulties was elaborated on, although it doesn’t have a full name yet. This difficulty was compared to the current Extreme difficulty fights which currently exist in the game.
The rewards for these new raid difficulties will be new season gear which can be gradually upgraded over time to eventually be as strong as the gear that can be obtained from Savage Raids. More details about this system will be revealed in a special producer live letter closer to launch
Further details about Same Region Player Matching were also talked about, with the first test of this new system to occur in the game’s Japanese servers this October, with North American and Europe tests coming at a later date.
Next, several images of dungeons players can expect to travel through in Evercold were shown. These images ranged seemingly peaceful fields to a more pirate ship-looking area.
Some artwork of upcoming gear was also shown during the key note
One of the biggest new features shown during this key note is an overhaul to the game’s Chocobo Companion system. In patch 8.1, players will be able to bring chocobos with them into dungeons to form a Light Party composed of two players and two chocobos.
There will also be a complete overhaul of the chocobo breeding system in patch 8.2 in order to better fit the new overhaul fitting this new system.
Next, a new trailer for the Evangelion Alliance Raids was shown. While this trailer didn’t have any gameplay details, it did assure players that Eva staff members like Mahiro Maeda would be involved with the collaboration. It was also pointed out that Eva Unit-01 looks different from usual in the raid’s key art.
Next, the theme of Evercold’s eight player raid series was revealed. This new raid series, Beyond the Lifestream, will be themed around the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy. Meaning that Final Fantasy XIV players will finally get to beat up Sephiroth in the same way they got to beat up Kefka and Exdeath.
The story will written by Motomu Toriyama and the FFXIV scenario team. Kazushige Nojima is supervising the story.
A new attraction will be added to the game’s Gold Saucer, a minigame called Keyboard Brawler. This new minigame will be a type game that is sure to cause strife in the never ending debate of keyboard vs controller FFXIV. Yoshi-P recommended refreshing yourself on Final Fantasy terminology as you’ll need to type those words to win.
Those of you who aren’t good at typing games may want to consider getting good, as the rewards for this minigame are Barret and Tifa’s outfits from Final Fantasy VII.
Final Fantasy XIV is currently available to play on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game allows new players to participate in a free trial that includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn and award-winning expansions Heavensward and Stormblood, allowing them to play up to Lvl 70 quests. This Free-Trial will also be updated to include Shadowbringers next week.
