Pocketpair has announced that, after spending a couple of years in Early Access, Palworld is finally getting a 1.0 release some time in 2026. While no exact release date was confirmed in the announcement, the studio has stated that there are still some surprises that will be revealed as we get closer to the end of the year.
In the video making the announcement, communications director and publishing manager John Buckley spoke about the future of the game, and how the final release involves more than just adding new content to Palworld. In his statement, Buckley spoke about the need to clean up and polish the game before launch, acknowledging that there are plenty of quirks to the core gameplay.
“While we have a lot of ideas for where we want to take Palworld, we also need to start thinking about Palworld 1.0,” said Buckley. “Beyond just adding new content, there’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done before Palworld can exit Early Access. It’s no secret that Palworld has a lot of quirks and jank, and we want to take the time to properly address those before releasing the game. With that in mind, we plan to start that cleanup this year. Our goal is to ultimately release Palworld next year, in 2026, and we think taking the time now to fix those problems will ultimately lead to a better game.”
Continuing with his message, Buckley noted that the studio will likely go quiet for a bit as it continues to work on polishing Palworld up for its exit from Early Access. He also confirmed that the planned Winter updated for Palworld won’t be as big as the update that came out earlier this year.
“So, what does this mean? It means that things will be a little quiet from us for the rest of this year,” he explained. “It also means our winter update won’t be as big as [the] February [update] was. We hope our players understand that we’re taking this extra time to improve the game overall. Now, that said, it doesn’t mean there will be no updates, but we still do have a few surprises planned for our winter update this year.”
“We just want to be transparent about where we’re headed and the development of Palworld going forward. Development of Palworld is not slowing down or scaling back, quite the opposite. Palworld 1.0 will be a major milestone for us, and we have a truly massive amount of content planned for the 1.0 update. Rather than rushing it, we believe that laying the right foundation now will lead to a better game in the end. We’re really excited about this, and we hope our fans will be really excited about this too. We plan to share some sneak peeks about Palworld 1.0 in the very near future.”
Palworld will be exiting Early Access on all platforms it is available for—PC (via Steam and Microsoft Store), PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
