Final Fantasy 14: Evercold delayed to February, preorders start next week

As reported by MMORPG.com, Square Enix has delayed Final Fantasy 14’s Evercold expansion to February 2 from its initial January launch window. Preorders for the add-on will open up on Wednesday, November 4â â€”those preorders also come with early access to the expansion on February 19.

The news was delivered by FF14 honcho Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida at the opening day of Final Fantasy 14’s 2026 Fan Festival in Tokyo. Yoshi-P explained that the team was committed to its January window, and were even “just barely” on track to meet that schedule. Quality concerns led Yoshi-P to make the call on three extra weeks of development time.

One month isn’t enormous in the context of most game development these days, but it is fairly impactful for the audience and overall pace of updates in a live service concern like Final Fantasy 14. Evercold will be the first new expansion for Final Fantasy 14 since the release of Dawntrail in July, 2024.

From the outside, Final Fantasy 14 has struck me as one of the more high-morale MMO communities out there, but I was permanently scarred by peak pandemic, Season of the Worthy Destiny, so my standards might be pretty low. In her 2025 state of the game writeup at the beginning of the Dawntrail era, PCG features producer Mollie Taylor observed that FF14 was in “a pretty weird spot.”

But Mollie seems cautiously optimistic for Evercold‘s promised changes, while a recent roguelike mode added to FF14 has news writer Harvey Randall excited for the upcoming expansion’s combat overhaul. Its new class looks pretty dope as well: A viking with two shields, laser cannons, and Wolverine claws.