Path of Exile 2 leaves Early Access on December 11, 2026 (PST) and becomes free to play, Grinding Gear Games confirmed in its own forum post on 25 August. The launch adds the Duelist, the game’s first sword-wielding class, and the final two campaign acts — the piece of 1.0 that turns a paid early-access ARPGARPG. Action RPG — an RPG with real-time combat rather than turn-based fights. into the complete product the studio has been building since December 2024.
What changed: the 1.0 date is confirmed by GGG, with the Duelist and the last two acts attached to it. Why it matters: 1.0 opens a fresh economy, so everything banked in the current leagues is worth what it is worth today and nothing after 11 December. Who should care: anyone holding currency in Forbidden Rites or Runes of Aldur, and anyone who has not yet decided whether the Duelist is their launch class.
That gives six weeks to prepare. Most of the advice in circulation is about the keynote date; the decisions that actually matter are about carry-over, timing and the fact that you will be sharing a launch window with the first Path of Exile expansion, which arrives four weeks earlier.
What 1.0 actually changes
Three things, and they are all confirmed rather than forecast.
The price. GGG’s post states the game “launches as a fully free-to-play action RPGRPG. Role-Playing Game — a game built around character progression, story, and player choices. on December 11 (PST)”. GamesRadar+ noted the same week that this drops the current $30 Early Access price tag on all platforms.
The class. The Duelist is the first sword-using class in the sequel, revealed in a trailer during gamescom’s Opening Night Live in Cologne. GamesRadar+ describes the footage as sword-and-shield work with melee, ranged and area attacks, including what appears to be Cyclone carried over from the first game.
The campaign. GamesRadar+ reports that alongside the Duelist, 1.0 adds “the game’s final two story chapters” plus content and tweaks GGG has not detailed. MMOBomb’s Gamescom write-up says the same, describing more campaign Acts arriving with the class.
Everything else about 1.0 — the league mechanic, the endgame reshuffle, the launch hour — is unannounced, and the studio’s own line is that announcements arrive during the keynote itself.
The calendar that decides your prep
Three dates land inside seven days, and they compete for the same evenings. All times PST, as stated by GGG and the community tracker.
| Date | What happens | What it means for your prep |
|---|---|---|
| 6 November, 1:00 pm | ExileCon 2026 keynote, roughly two hours, covering both games | The only pre-launch reveal of the 1.0 league mechanic and the Duelist’s ascendancies |
| 9 November, 1:00 pm | Curse of the Allflame league ends in Path of Exile 1 | The first game’s current economy closes |
| 13 November | Path of Exile 1’s 3.30 expansion launches | A second fresh economy, four weeks before the bigger one |
| 11 December | Path of Exile 2 1.0, free to play, fresh economy | The date your current holdings stop mattering |
The keynote timing comes from GGG’s “Two Weeks Until ExileCon 2026” forum post, as reported by Output Lag: a 12:30 pm pre-show hosted by ZiggyD, Mathil, RaizQT and DarthMicrotransaction, then the keynote at 1:00 pm, with trailers and announcement pages published as each reveal happens on stream rather than in a single dump afterwards. Twitch Drops run during the broadcast.
The 3.30 date matters more than it looks. Anyone planning to play both games has to decide which launch gets their first weekend, and the PoE1 expansion arrives 28 days earlier with its own economy reset. Choosing both means playing neither properly.
What survives the reset, and what does not
This is the part that decides what you do with the next six weeks, and the split is cleaner than most players assume.
| Thing | Carries into 1.0? | Consequence for prep |
|---|---|---|
| Characters | Yes — not wiped, moved to a Standard Early Access realm | They are keepsakes, not head starts: they cannot play with characters made at or after launch |
| Currency value | No — the economy starts fresh | Spend spare orbs before 11 December; a hoard does not survive as purchasing power |
| Paid stash tabs | Yes — account-bound | The one purchase that keeps full value through the reset, so it is the right thing to buy now |
| Cosmetics and microtransactions | Yes — account-bound | Safe to buy at any point |
| Challenge rewards | Yes | Earned rewards stay on the account |
| League stash items | Move with the character into the Early Access pool | Real items, wrong economy: they cannot help a 1.0 character |
Two details are easy to get wrong. First, the Early Access leagues do not merge into 1.0 — GGG committed in 2024 that characters would never be wiped, and they instead move to a Standard Early Access realm that is separate from the new Standard. Second, owning Early Access does not count as registering: the milestone rewards attach to a sign-up at pathofexile2.com/register, which GGG reminded players about on 19 October.
If you want the full mechanism of that sign-up, this site covered it when the portal opened: what registration grants and who is eligible.
Why the quiet window is the cheapest time to work
Path of Exile 2 sat at rank 94 on Steam’s Most Played chart on 29 October, with 15,372 concurrent players and a peak of 16,119 earlier that day. For a game that drew a launch-week peak above 570,000 and a 147,624 peak when the Forbidden Rites event opened on 4 September, that is the between-leagues trough — and the tracker shows exactly this shape after every update, with monthly peaks falling to five figures before the next content drop.
That matters for two reasons. The trivial one is that the current league is late and its exchange rate has drifted accordingly, which is a spend signal rather than a hold signal. The useful one is that the next six weeks are the last stretch where you can finish something ambitious in a mature economy — a pinnacle boss, a full Atlas, a challenge set — with a settled market and populated trade. The same objectives cost far more in the first ten days of 1.0, when nobody has currency and the market is still forming.
The content 1.0 inherits is already substantial, according to the official site: the Origins of Divinity endgame with the Precursor Fortress, three Atlas Masters that act like ascendancies for the Atlas tree, and a passive tree the site puts at more than 300 nodes, alongside Breach, Ritual, Expedition, Abyss and the Temple of Atziri. A launch character is not stepping into a thin endgame.
The five decisions to settle before 11 December
- Register, even though you already own the game. The rewards are tied to the sign-up, not the purchase.
- Buy the account upgrades you will want, not the ones you want now. Stash tabs are the only spend that keeps its value through a league reset; spare currency does not.
- Do not hoard into the reset. Any Divine you will not spend before 11 December is value headed toward a re-priced market. Turn it into a finished goal or a kept item instead.
- Watch the keynote before committing to the Duelist. GGG has not announced its ascendancies, so a launch plan built on a class whose subclasses are unknown is a guess, not a plan. If you want certainty, pick a class you already know how to level — the current class comparison is a reasonable starting point, with the caveat that it predates 1.0.
- Pick one launch weekend. PoE1 3.30 on 13 November and PoE2 1.0 on 11 December are four weeks apart. Committing to both means arriving at the bigger one tired.
What nobody knows yet
Being precise about the gaps is more useful than filling them, so: GGG has not announced the 1.0 launch hour, the Duelist’s ascendancy classes, the name or mechanic of the launch league, or what the endgame looks like after the final two acts arrive. The keynote on 6 November is where those land, five weeks before launch — GGG has said the reveals will publish during the broadcast.
Anyone telling you the league mechanic today is extrapolating. The honest plan builds in a decision point on 6 November rather than guessing past it.