Path of Exile 2 Goes Free to Play December 11 With the Shadow and Army Sieges

Grinding Gear Games closed out ExileCon 2026 in Auckland with release dates for both action RPGs. Path of Exile 2 leaves Early Access as a free-to-play game on December 11, 2026 (PST), carrying the Conquerors of Wraeclast league, a new Shadow class and the final two acts. Path of Exile gets its Covens of Umbra expansion first, on November 13, 2026 (PST).

Path of Exile 2 finishes the campaign with Acts 5 and 6

Acts 5 and 6 add 24 areas, 18 new bosses and more than 20 special encounters, with the story returning to a war-wrecked Oriath as the run to the Twilight Order and the Beast closes out the campaign.

At launch the studio claims ten playable classes, 26 Ascendancy classes, more than 320 skills, over 400 Unique items and 150-plus endgame maps. Over 200 new base item types join the pool alongside 40 new Uniques and more than 70 revamped ones, the passive tree gets a wide rework, and Support Gems are rebalanced.

Shadow, the Duelist Knight, and armies in Conquerors of Wraeclast

The Shadow joins the previously revealed Duelist as the second new class at 1.0. It runs on daggers, traps and a stealth state that resets on every kill, so the loop is ambush, kill, vanish, repeat. Traps laid while hidden wait for stealth to break, then fire in the order they were placed, and the eight trap types stack impale, poison, fire and ice. Shades copy the character, Darkness is a resource that empowers the next skill, and Eclipse treats every attack as a stealth strike. Its Ascendancies are the Assassin and the Infiltrator.

The Duelist’s new Knight Ascendancy brings a gearable Squire that can use melee skill gems, War Banners keyed to Wraeclast’s old empires, and a chariot charge that scatters and stuns. A second Duelist Ascendancy, Master of Arms, follows later.

The league itself turns the Atlas into a war map: players recruit armies, raise a stronghold, hire three commanders and fight 23 campaign battles, then contest 100 castles with rival factions for item rarity and Hunting Grounds access. Reforging replaces unwanted modifiers with permanently fractured ones, and the Atlas passive tree is rebuilt as 70 nodes earned through objectives.

Covens of Umbra reworks the Path of Exile endgame on November 13

Patch 3.30 pits players against witch covens, adds the Wickerman system for building effigies from dead bosses, and lets players bend boss Fates toward better rewards. Threads of Creation replace Scarabs and can guarantee up to three primary league mechanics in a map, while the Atlas tree is redesigned and item drops get a wide rework.

Both dates are Pacific time, so players in Manila get them a day later. Path of Exile 2 arrives on PC, Mac, Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation and Xbox, adds Mac support for M2 and newer plus M1 Pro, and is Steam Deck Verified with up to 25 percent extra CPU performance promised for 1.0. Covens of Umbra ships on PC, Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation and Xbox. The Curse of the Allflame league ran until November 9.