Hunt Showdown Roadmap: Promises, Status and Yearly Archive
Since 2023 Crytek has presented a plan for the coming year of Hunt: Showdown 1896 around every turn of the year. This page places the Hunt Showdown roadmap in lasting context: what the current plan promises, what of it has arrived in the game and how the earlier yearly plans turned out. The dated individual reports stay in the news posts of their respective years — what stands here is the running overall picture.
Last checked on 1 September 2026
The basis is the official roadmap announcement of 7 November 2025 and the patch notes published up to August 2026. This page is updated as soon as Crytek announces new plans or implements further points.
Hunt Showdown roadmap: rhythm and reliability of the announcements
The roadmap appears as a blog post on the official site, most recently on 7 November 2025 for the year 2026. It is not a calendar with dates but a mix of three kinds of statements that can be told apart while reading: firm promises ("Inferno returns"), items under review ("we are investigating whether consumable and tool slots can be merged") and hints such as the new experimental weapon, about which Crytek only reveals a "primitive, destructive force". How solid a point is, then, is already visible in its wording.
The rhythm has shifted along the way. In 2023 the plan still promised quarterly content updates, in 2024 it carried three large chunks, and Crytek describes the year 2025 in hindsight as a consolidation phase in which the events Garden of the Witch, Judgement of the Fool and Web of the Empress served as carriers for more than a thousand fixes and balance changes. The 2026 roadmap is the first to make bringing back proven content an explicit part of the program.
The biggest promise for 2026 has been kept
The most prominent point of the current plan was the return of the wildcard condition Inferno, still "in active testing" in November 2025. On 15 April 2026 it went live in the middle of the Devil's Trail event and stayed active until 10 June — with wildfires on all maps, the freely roaming boss Hellborn, Firefighter supply points and the reworked Flame Rifle. What was delivered was more than the announcement had promised.
This is how the remaining promises stand:
| Promise from the 2026 roadmap | Status September 2026 |
|---|---|
| Inferno wildcard | ✅ back since 15 April |
| Tarot Cards made permanent | ✅ implemented |
| Legends Return / Legacy Chronicle | ✅ second edition in August |
| Further developed events | ✅ Road to Hell running as Update 2.8 |
| Tier 3 hunters ("phased return") | 🔄 no documented phase |
| New experimental weapon | 🔄 still unannounced |
| Full season model | 🔄 in progress, no date |
| Loadout rework (merging slots) | 🔄 has remained under review so far |
| More players per mission | 🔄 technical test announced |
The detailed balance sheet with all patch evidence and the details on Road to Hell is in the continuously updated interim status on the 2026 roadmap.
The yearly roadmaps since 2023
The plan for 2023 relied on quarterly updates and started with Update 1.12: improved solo perks such as Magpie, Serpent and Necromancer, higher bounties for understaffed teams, wildcard contracts and a new tutorial voiced by Doug Cockle. The details are recorded in the post on the 2023 roadmap.
2024 brought the biggest rework in the game's history: a new open map, the migration to a newer engine generation and the jump to the current consoles. All three points were delivered on 15 August 2024 in the relaunch as Hunt: Showdown 1896, with Mammon's Gulch as the new setting — as covered in the post on the 2024 roadmap.
The 2026 roadmap, finally, shifts the weight: fewer new systems out of nowhere, more return of proven content in reworked form, plus the standing task of fairness with more than 14,000 accounts banned in the months before the announcement alone and ongoing matchmaking tests.
Events keep their dates, system reworks take longer
Across three yearly plans the same pattern shows. What can be shipped as content — maps, events, weapons and bosses brought back — does arrive, sometimes with more substance than announced. What touches the core systems slips: the loadout rework remained an item under review, the season model still has no date ten months after the announcement, and since Crytek has deliberately not committed itself, a start no earlier than 2027 is the more realistic expectation.
For everyday play that means a return is worth it during event periods, because the noticeable additions land there first; anyone waiting for structural changes such as new progression systems, on the other hand, needs patience. The basics on the game principle, maps and equipment are in the wiki overview of Hunt: Showdown 1896.
As soon as Crytek presents the plan for 2027, this page will be updated — the previous yearly posts remain as a dated archive.