Path of Exile 2 targets 2026 release, but missing some classes

Grinding Gear Games has set its sights on a full 1.0 launch for Path of Exile 2 before the end of 2026. Game director and co-founder Jonathan Rogers shared this timeline during a press briefing for the final early access patch, 0.5.0, titled Return of the Ancients, which arrives at the end of May.

Rogers told journalists that the studio aims to release the 1.0 version shortly after ExileCon, the Path of Exile convention scheduled for early November in New Zealand, where Grinding Gear Games is based. For context, Path of Exile 2 entered early access in early December 2024.

“This is actually intended to be the final update in early access before 1.0,” Rogers explained during the briefing. “The endgame is the last major thing we feel is really important to get right before we’re able to ship, so assuming that the players actually really like the new endgame stuff for this update, there really should be no reason why we can’t launch into 1.0 for the next update.”

He continued: “We are intending to do 1.0 this year, sometime after Exile Con. That is the plan and I believe we can achieve that assuming people are happy with the endgame stuff.”

In a follow-up interview, I pressed Rogers on the feasibility of that target. The game’s full release date has become a recurring topic in our conversations, largely because there remains significant content to add before Path of Exile 2 feels feature complete. Two entire campaign Acts are still missing, which would bring the total to six, and several character classes have yet to debut. I worried that the upcoming patch’s heavy focus on reshaping the endgame might have pushed these items aside. Rogers, however, sounded confident.

“It’s not like we just started on Acts 5 and 6,” he said. “We’ve been working on them for a while, so there’s been a lot of work on them already, and it’s just a question of getting everything ready for release. Most of the environment work for Act 5 is done. There’s a little bit left for Act 6. We’re a long way along the road of having that stuff done. It’s just getting the bosses done, the play testing to do, and all that sort of stuff, so it’s certainly not impossible to get that stuff done.”

To hit the 1.0 deadline, however, some sacrifices are necessary. Specifically, not all missing character classes will be ready at launch. Currently, eight classes are playable: warrior, ranger, huntress, sorceress, mercenary, monk, druid, and witch. The remaining four from Path of Exile 1 , Marauder, Duelist, Shadow, and Templar , are expected to arrive after the full release.

“As long as it feels like a complete game and that there are enough classes, which there will be, definitely … it’s not going to be the end of the world,” Rogers said. “Originally we were going to do 12 character classes but I actually don’t believe any more that it’s crucial that all of them are necessarily in 1.0. We want to make sure that all the character classes we do have are finished and they’ve got all the ascendancy classes they need, and they’ve got all the skills they need, and everything like that. There are more character classes that will come. But I don’t actually necessarily think that for 1.0 you need that.”

Rogers added: “The key thing that we need to know is that the game feels complete, and I think it will feel complete with what we’ve got there. If the campaign’s in and good, and the endgame is full of content… No one can accuse us of having a shortage of content, so we should be good there. As long as it feels like a complete game and that there are enough classes, which there will be, definitely , I think we’re missing one or two of them , it’s not going to be the end of the world. We’ll just do them after the fact. That’s still stuff that we can do a little bit later.”

Rogers declined to specify exactly how many classes will be available at launch, leaving open the possibility that one or more could still make it in.

The biggest variable in Grinding Gear Games’ release plan is player feedback on the upcoming endgame overhaul. Patch 0.5.0 introduces major questlines to give the endgame more structure, along with entire new areas of the Atlas world and ambitious, overlapping mechanics. While the studio is confident it can finish Acts 5 and 6 largely behind the scenes, the endgame changes require real player testing before the team can greenlight 1.0.

“We know how to add an Act,” Rogers explained, “and I’m pretty sure at this point, people trust that when we do add an Act, it’s going to be good. Like, there’s nothing to kind of test about that, and that means that we’re safe to deploy Act 5 and 6 in 1.0 and that’s not a big problem. Whereas the endgame: we may think we know that the endgame is going to be good, but we do have to actually test that before we can release it in 1.0, because otherwise we might be launching into something where we’ve got this whole huge system that isn’t necessarily up to scratch. So it is crucial that we’re able to know that yes, the endgame that we’ve envisioned here is actually good, before we can go into 1.0. So even though our plan is to do 1.0 by the end of the year, if the endgame wasn’t accepted, we would continue iterating on it until the point where it was, before we could say 1.0 was good.”

I was thoroughly impressed by Path of Exile 2 when I reviewed it at early access launch , an action role-playing game in the vein of Diablo, but deeper and more challenging. Since then, it has grown substantially, adding one of the missing three acts, several new classes, and a wealth of items, skills, and gameplay mechanics. Even the existing Acts will receive another pass before 1.0. It is, in short, a launch to look forward to.

Return of the Ancients, patch 0.5.0, arrives on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X on May 29th. Early access currently requires a purchase, but the full game will be free to play upon its 1.0 release.