Path of Exile 2 Full Release Date: December 11 Confirmed

Grinding Gear Games confirmed at ExileCon 2026 that Path of Exile 2 will exit Early Access and enter Full Release on December 11. The studio's announcement, posted to Steam and shown in a dedicated trailer during the convention's keynote, lays out the biggest update the game has received since its December 2024 Early Access launch: a completed six-act campaign, two new classes, a new Challenge League, and sweeping changes across uniques, skills, and the passive tree.

01Path of Exile 2's Full Release Date Is December 11

Path of Exile 2 launched into Early Access in December 2024 and has spent the time since adding acts, classes, and endgame systems in staged updates. Grinding Gear Games now says that process ends on December 11, when version 1.0 goes live on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The studio also confirmed the game stays free-to-play at Full Release, with purchases limited to cosmetics, matching how the first Path of Exile has run for over a decade.

02Acts 5 and 6 Complete the Six-Act Campaign

The headline addition is the rest of the story. Acts 5 and 6 pick up the campaign where Early Access left off and send Exiles back to Oriath to confront the Twilight Order and, ultimately, the Beast. Grinding Gear Games says the final two acts add 24 new areas, 18 new unique bosses, and more than 20 Champion Rare encounters, each built around its own mechanics rather than reused monster templates.

The studio frames this as the campaign finally working as intended: a continuous six-act story rather than the three-act loop players have used to level characters since 2024. Early Access veterans jumping into the official site's patch coverage can expect the back half of the campaign to read as new content rather than a retread.

03New Classes: The Shadow and the Duelist

Full Release adds two classes that were promised but not yet playable in Early Access. The Shadow uses daggers, traps, and a new Stealth mechanic: while hidden, nearby monsters can't see the Shadow until it closes to short range, and staying in the shadows boosts dagger skills. On release, the Shadow has two Ascendancy classes, the Assassin and the Infiltrator.

The Duelist is built around swords and a new Stances system. Its default Ready Stance buffs sword skills outright, and can be upgraded mid-fight into either a Sand Stance or a Blood Stance for different combat styles. The Duelist launches with two Ascendancy classes of its own, the Knight and the Master-at-Arms.

04Conquerors of Wraeclast: The Launch Challenge League

Full Release ships alongside a new Challenge League, Conquerors of Wraeclast, built around Varek and his mercenaries. Players recruit troops, deploy them on real-time battlefields, and fight to capture castles held by other player factions, choosing one of three factions with its own fortress style and unit roster. Conquering a castle unlocks its treasury and a new crafting material used to reforge gear. The league's endgame storyline, the Blood Lord's Promise, digs into the Sanguar bloodline and the ancient Blood Lord players are trying to stop from waking.

Grinding Gear Games is also adding a real-time system that lets players delegate parts of Atlas (endgame map) progression to in-game commanders, aimed at players who want to automate repetitive legwork without losing control of build decisions.

05New Uniques, Skills, and a Reworked Passive Tree

Item hunting changes too. The studio says Full Release adds more than 40 new Unique items and reworks over 70 existing ones with new modifiers, skills, or visuals, intended to make finding a Unique feel rewarding again rather than a stat-stick upgrade. Classes that launched without a full skill set, including the Warrior and the Witch, get new skills of their own, and Support Gems across the board have been rebalanced to broaden which ones are actually worth socketing.

The Passive Skill Tree also gets a significant pass: hundreds of new stat nodes, and Jewel Sockets moved into clusters so players weigh a cluster's effect rather than chasing every socket on the tree regardless of what it unlocks. Several existing Ascendancies were reworked alongside the new ones — the Mercenary's reload mechanics changed outright, the Infernalist gets a new demonic minion and up to three Infernal Hounds, the Blood Mage gets new skills tied to a reworked Corrupted Blood mechanic, and the Acolyte of Chayula can now summon a Quarterstaff-wielding companion or sacrifice its own life to transfer its soul into a clone.

Grinding Gear Games' official Full Release announcement trailer, revealed at ExileCon 2026.

06What's Next for Path of Exile 2

December 11 closes out roughly two years of Early Access for Path of Exile 2, which began with three acts and has grown in stages since. Grinding Gear Games used the ExileCon keynote to thank the community that tested those builds, and the studio's social accounts have continued posting from the convention through the weekend, including results from a separate Path of Exile 1 community race held on-site.

The Path of Exile 2 campaign is complete! Return to Oriath in Acts 5 and 6, face the horrors that await, and put an end to the Twilight Order and the Beast once and for all. Path of Exile 2 fully releases on December 11 (PST).

— Path of Exile (@pathofexile), Nov 6, 2026 on X

For now, Grinding Gear Games hasn't published full server-wipe or league-transition details for existing Early Access characters, so treat anything beyond the December 11 date and the features above as unconfirmed until the studio's patch notes land closer to launch.