Crusader Kings 3 is heading towards “a year of depth” in 2026 and should receive at least one donkey, according to a Chapter 5 teaser shared by Game Director Alexander Oltner. In addition, Chapter 4 will be retired from sale in mid-January.
After 2025 finally saw the introduction of China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, thus completing the game’s world map, Crusader Kings 3’s Chapter V aims to “deepen the overall game experience,“ something that a dedicated portion of the grand strategy game’s playerbase has been asking for since its first pieces of post-launch DLC began dropping.
Crusader Kings 3 Chapter 5 Teases “a year of depth”
“As has now become tradition, we will be doing another chapter; this time we’re shifting our focus slightly - if 2025 was the year of going wide (Nomads, all of Asia) then 2026 will be a year of depth,” Oltner explains in a developer diary over on the Paradox forums.
“We’re going to go back and revisit some parts of the game that’ll deepen the overall game experience. Just like how Roads to Power set the stage for All Under Heaven, the All Under Heaven expansion is setting the stage for this future content. There are some central areas of the game that we’ve been itching to improve for a long, long time now - and I’m sure that those of you who have been around for a while will be able to figure out what the theme for the next major expansion is most likely going to be…”
He followed with a cryptic picture of what seems to be an untextured 3D model of a donkey, saying that it acts as “more of a hint for one of the expansions than the other“ before challenging the community to figure out what it means.
Whether this picture is a throwback to something CK2-related, a current inside joke, or confirmation that we’re finally getting a Sunset Invasion-style DLC focused on invading hordes of donkeys rather than Aztecs is currently unclear. The team will start sharing more details over the coming months.
In addition to CK3’s Chapter V, we will keep getting free updates as well as more creator packs, so it’s probably safe to bet that 2026 will be at least as active as this year was for the grand strategy game.
The same developer diary confirms that Crusader Kings III’s Chapter 4, which bundles all of 2025’s expansion in one discounted package, will officially be retired from sale on January 14, 2026, giving anyone who has yet to pick it up about a month to do so.
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