Crusader Kings III’s 2026 content plan is built around Chapter V, a year that Paradox has explicitly framed as “depth” rather than “width.” Where 2025’s Chapter IV went wide — adding China, Japan, and Southeast Asia to complete the world map — Chapter V returns to the game’s core systems. Game director Alexander Oltner described the shift plainly: if 2025 was the year of going wide, 2026 is a year of depth, revisiting parts of the game the team has wanted to improve for a long time. This roadmap piece separates what Paradox has confirmed from what remains inference.

What is confirmed for Chapter V

Chapter V launched as a paid pass on April 20, 2026 (suggested price $43.99 / £36.99 / €43.99) and bundles two upcoming expansions plus two items available immediately:

  • Symbols of Authority — a clothing pack of new crowns and headwear for European characters, available on launch day to Chapter V holders.
  • Songs of the Realm — a 13-track music pack mixing remastered Crusader Kings classics and adaptations of traditional European music, available on launch day.
  • By God Alone — a core expansion focused on religion and the Christian church, confirmed for release on September 30, 2026 (standalone price $19.99 / £16.99 / €19.99).
  • Silk & Silver — a major expansion focused on trade and merchant republics, confirmed for November 2026.

A free major update (version 1.19) shipped alongside the Chapter V announcement and is available to everyone, not just pass holders.

By God Alone: religion, theocracies, and the Pope

By God Alone is the first expansion and the deeper of the two on confirmed mechanics. It reworks CK3’s religion systems with a focus on the Christian church, and the headline addition is playable theocracies — you can now take control of an archbishop’s realm or the Papacy itself, with new resources of power and wealth available to the Pope.

The expansion introduces a persistent Christian “Situation” that tracks the evolving state of the church across the campaign, including participation in Ecumenical Councils to decide religious tenets. Rites model local variations of practice within a faith — Mozarabic and Insular faiths are represented as rites within Chalcedonian Christianity, for example — and rites that diverge too far from the standard faith can be declared heretical, forcing a choice between conforming and rebelling. In the 867 start, Christianity begins unified as Chalcedonian and can eventually reach the Great Schism, splitting Western Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy.

Other confirmed systems include archdioceses (clerical titles with religious authority over a geographical region), a College of Cardinals the Pope can appoint across Christendom, dynamic holy sites that shift as a faith grows, monastic holy orders as centers of research and theological power, and a “Puppets” mechanic letting secular rulers place clerical characters — including a court chaplain — to act on their behalf. A Spiritual Fulfillment system ties traits, actions, and reworked tenets into characters’ inner religious lives, so sin and virtue affect more than stress.

Silk & Silver: trade and merchant republics

Silk & Silver is the second expansion and the one most players have asked about for the longest time: trade. It introduces a needs-and-production trade system set up in every county in the world, with trade goods like salt, silver, gold, and copper, moved along trade routes established by new mercantile governments. The two mercantile government types are merchants — landless rulers settled around cities who run family trading companies, adapting the house-unity system from Legacy of Persia — and republics, inspired by Venice, Genoa, and Florence, where trade income converts into political capital and rival families compete to control the republic. Republics act as soft power, forming trade leagues that can rival historical powers like the Hansa.

A district system replaces per-county buildings: you build market or resource districts containing multiple buildings, and resource districts produce the trade goods. Each county has three to five potential goods to choose from. Silk & Silver also adds Italian flavor — improved historicity across the three start dates, smaller new counties suited to republic play, and a Guelphs-and-Ghibellines situation in northern Italy. Paradox confirmed Silk & Silver unlocks to Chapter V holders in November; exact date and standalone price should be treated as not-yet-final until Paradox posts them.

The free 1.19 update

The free update is the part every player gets regardless of purchase. It adds a modular Stories system that surfaces previously invisible story cycles (great conqueror, court doppelganger, and similar) in a visible, coherent format in the situations tab. It adds age-related ailments — a set of traits gained as characters grow old that start mild and can be mitigated by in-game actions, replacing the binary “instantly decrepit or functionally immortal” aging the game had before. It reworks accolades to remove the tedium of manually assigning and maintaining them, replacing it with a challenge-based unlock system where attributes train their own squires.

A fully fledged Ledger window — built in collaboration with the AGAMI modder — provides sortable realm, character, and world data, and the update adds interface changes, new sound cues, and more shortcuts. As a crossover Easter egg, the update adds a Kingdom Come: Deliverance collaboration: from the 867, 1066, or 1178 start dates, players may encounter Henry as an in-game adventurer.

What is inference, not confirmed

A few things circulating in community discussion should be kept separate from the official record. Chapter IV (2025’s content) was retired from sale on January 14, 2026 — that is confirmed, and matters for anyone who had not yet bought it. Beyond By God Alone and Silk & Silver, no third Chapter V expansion has been announced; anything about further 2026 content beyond the two expansions, the two launch-day packs, and the free update is speculation. A “donkey” model teased in a late-2025 developer diary was acknowledged by Oltner as a hint toward one of the expansions rather than the other, and the community has not settled on a definitive reading — treat specific claims about what it means as rumor until a dev diary confirms them.

What it means for players

For an existing CK3 player, the practical read is that 2026 deepens two long-requested areas — religion and trade — rather than adding new map regions. If you have wanted playable theocracies, a living Christian church, or a real trade-and-republics layer, By God Alone (September 30) and Silk & Silver (November) are the confirmed deliverables, and the free 1.19 update improves the stories, aging, and information systems for everyone regardless of purchase. Chapter V is the pass that bundles them; the two expansions are also sold standalone.