Path of Exile 2 launches free Dec. 11 with two classes

Grinding Gear Games announced the Path of Exile 2 launch plans at Exilecon 2026. The action RPG will become free to play on Dec. 11, 2026, nearly two years after entering paid early access. It will be available through Steam and the standalone Grinding Gear Games launcher.

Acts Five and Six will complete the main campaign. The two acts will add 24 areas and 18 major bosses. Act Five will return players to Oriath, where they will face the Twilight Order and The Beast. Later campaign content will include an encounter involving the Blight.

The launch will add the Duelist and Shadow classes. The Duelist specializes in swords and will have the Knight Ascendancy. Knights can summon and equip a Squire companion, deploy War Banners and use Mounted Charge to ride a golden chariot through enemies.

The Shadow uses daggers, traps and stealth. Players will be able to see enemy vision cones and receive attack bonuses when striking from outside them. Stealth will reset after a kill, allowing attacks against groups of enemies to be chained. The class will have the Assassin and Infiltrator Ascendancies at launch.

Shadow traps will activate in the order they were placed. Freeze Trap can be followed by Concussive Trap to shatter frozen enemies. Poison Gas Trap can be spread with Concussive Trap and ignited with Fire Trap. The class will have eight traps, along with abilities including Ethereal Knives, Blade Vortex and Electrocution Trap.

The Shadow will use Darkness to power attacks and create shades from marked enemies. Eclipse will temporarily apply stealth effects to attacks. A new Death Summary screen will explain the damage and effects that caused a character’s death.

The Conquerors of Wraeclast league will add army building and territory control to the game. Players will recruit troops, manage supplies and fight rival factions. Battles will begin with placing units on a battlefield before players join the fight directly.

The league will include raids, castle sieges and boss encounters such as Valen, the Dread Carnifex. Boss victories can provide Treasury keys, crafting materials and stronger rewards. The materials will let players replace selected item modifiers with fractured modifiers that remain fixed during later crafting.

Players will be able to build and defend a Stronghold, hire commanders to clear Atlas maps with troops and join one of three factions. Each faction will compete for up to 100 rival castles on the endgame Atlas. Captured castles will provide access to nearby hunting grounds, which are special maps with stronger modifiers.

Grinding Gear Games will add 40 unique items and rework existing ones to provide more specialized skills and effects. The passive skill tree will receive new nodes for existing and new classes, while jewel sockets will be placed deeper in skill clusters.

The update will revise support gems, add skills, rework the Acolyte of Chayula and change Mercenary reload mechanics. The Atlas tree will be reduced to 70 nodes. Grinding Gear Games also plans performance improvements. The game’s files will be reduced by 30 gigabytes before 40 gigabytes of new launch content is added, leaving the installation size broadly similar.

Reviewed and fact-checked by Vlad Kipran on November 7.