Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition Patch Notes (Latest) - Full Update History & Roadmap for 2026

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition counts among the most celebrated remakes in recent memory, receiving regular patches since its release in August 2025. This article gathers all the details regarding the strategy game’s latest patches alongside what we know about its 2026 update roadmap.

You’ll find the full patch notes for the latest Dawn of War - Definitive Edition update alongside the dates of its previous patches, so you can get a clear picture of how the strategy game has evolved since release.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition Latest Patch Notes - 2.7.0 Update

Although developer Relic Entertainment hasn’t provided a clear 2026 update roadmap thus far, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition has been receiving regular patches since launch.

Its latest, the 2.7.0 update, addresses issues tied to the pathfinding of melee units when chasing retreating opponents and much more. It went live on February 17, 2026, and you can read its full patch notes below:

General

• Crash – fixed a crash on launch where the display device was not detected correctly on first boot. Please submit BugSplat reports and add information about if it was your first time booting the game or happening repeatedly if you continue to see an issue
• Match Reporting – fixed some instances of match results being sent incorrectly or at the wrong time. This resulted in some matches not being recorded correctly in player stats
• Audio – added audio treatment to numerous pieces of Russian unit dialogue to be more consistent with other languages.
• Examples include faction-appropriate helmet reverb on many Space Marine, Chaos, and Eldar units, faction-appropriate radio effects on many vehicles, and the Eldar Avatar of Khaine sounding far more godlike
• Audio – added support to restart ambient background music when loading a save file in the Dawn of War and Winter Assault campaigns. Note: If the music was triggered by a scripted objective change it will not reload / update until the next objective update
• Shadows – disabled shadows on numerous small objects placed in maps (ex. stones, grass) to reduce the appearance of floating when on uneven terrain
• Rendering – disabled manual window resizing when playing in Windowed Mode to prevent a mismatch between game and window resolution

Gameplay

• Melee Combat – updated the pathfinding system to allow melee attacks on fleeing opponents to be successful more frequently instead of stopping or switching to ranged combat. The intention is to more closely match Soulstorm’s legacy behavior
• Melee Combat – Fixed a case where revived units such as Necron Warriors and the Living Saints would endlessly pursue their last melee attacker
• Economy – fixed an exploit where research could be unlocked earlier than designed by deleting a required building, getting a refund, and buying the upgrade before the requirement updated
• Pathfinding – fixed several cases where units could become
• stuck inside each other – for example when hit by a knockback attack or when melee attacking a larger vehicle. Enemy units in these overlapping cases will now be able to phase through each other to disengage
• Save/Load - units that had an order active when the game was saved now resume the order when loading. Applies to actions such as: move, using an ability, construction, repair, capturing, and more. Note: Capture action will resume but capture progress will be lost
• Chaos – fixed a tuning issue that caused the Dark Crusade & Soulstorm campaign Chaos Lords to become weaker when ascending to Daemon Princes through Wargear unlocks
• Chaos – fixed a case where the cooldown on the Chaos Raptors Speed Fiends ability would reset immediately after spawning the Aspiring Champion
• Chaos – updated the Aspiring Champion’s Berzerk Fury gridkey & command card button to the bottom row to avoid conflict with Attack Ground when attached to Cultists with a Grenade Launcher. See Known Issues list at the bottom of this post for additional details
• Chaos – added missing Russian dialogue that caused the Aspiring Champion to respond in English
• Dark Eldar – updated the Terrorfex Grenade ability gridkey and command card button to the third position to avoid conflict with Haemonculus abilities
• Imperial Guard – added hotkey support for the Assassin Infiltration research in the Dark Crusade campaign
• Necron – updated the limit on the number of harvestable bodies in the world at a given time to be per Necron player value (75) rather than a global one for matches with more than 1 Necron player
• Orks – increased the attack range of the Slugga Boyz to fix cases where they would not attack while within weapon range
• Orks – updated Mine Field to use the correct hotkey binding ork_mine_field
• Sisters of Battle – fixed a case where the cooldown on the Angelic Visage ability cooldown would instantly reset when adding the Seraphim Sergeant
• Sisters of Battle – fixed an unintentional cooldown reset by removing a duplicate ability on the Veteran Superiors for the Celestian and Seraphim squads
• Space Marines – update the Librarian to correct default to ranged combat instead of melee
• Space Marines – updated Skull Probe’s sabotage ability to prevent enemy vehicles from Jumping
• Space Marines – added hotkey support for Librarian research in the original campaign and moved it to S for all campaigns to prevent overlapping
• Space Marines – updated the Champion Select screen to load the correct face model when selecting Space Marines
• Tau – increased the Fire Warrior Bodyguard line of sight to 25 to prevent issues where it would stop attacking while still in weapon range
• Winter Assault Campaign – fixed a bug with squad reinforcement that could result in new units using the incorrect team colors
• Winter Assault Order Mission 4 fixed a script error that caused the incorrect Eldar color scheme to be used in the closing cutscene
• Dark Crusade – fixed a fatal scar error that could occur in the Chaos Stronghold mission during the ending cutscene when a Necron unit dies right before the cutscene starts
• Dark Crusade – updated the Eldar Stronghold script to correctly trigger the intro dialogue when playing in Russian
• Soulstorm – updated the camera for the Chaos Stronghold closing cutscene to avoid situations where units would clip through the camera

User Interface

• Japanese – fixed translations for Diplomacy and Objectives on the HUD buttons
• Lighting – updated lighting on the Dark Crusade and Soulstorm Commander and Wargear screens to load consistently and be rendered from the correct direction
• Army Painter – tuned lighting used on the Army Painter screen
• Army Painter – adjusted positioning of several units to appear more grounded in the scene
• Cover – fixed description of Cover to better reflect in-game behavior
• Chaos – fixed description of the Heavy Weapon Increase upgrade to better reflect in-game behavior
• Eldar – fixed a data error that caused incorrect Eldar unit portraits to be displayed for the Bonesinger, Guardian, Seer Council, and Fire Dragon
• Eldar – updated several upgrade icons that were displaying lower resolution versions
• Imperial Guard – fixed missing icon that caused a Space Marine skull icon to be shown when hovering over the HUD minimize button
• Imperial Guard – updated description for the Psyker Soul Strip ability to correctly reflect in-game behavior
• Imperial Guard – updated several upgrade icons that were displaying lower resolution versions
• Space Marines – updated Skull Probe Sabotage ability tooltip to correct reflect disabling enemy vehicles
• Winter Assault – updated text spacing on loading screens to fix text that could be cut off
• Dark Crusade – updated Ariel Highlands loading screen to remove visible debug lines
• Dark Crusade / Soulstorm – increased the resolutions on Wargear icons
• Dark Crusade / Soulstorm – updated lighting to load correctly and project from the correct direction on the Wargear screens
• Dark Crusade / Soulstorm – added missing icon when the Chaos Lord has Ascension to Daemonhood Wargear equipped
• Soulstorm – fixed blurry outline on the Soulstorm Campaign loading screen
• Soulstorm – fixed the location of the popups when mousing over the rewards earned sections on the Victory screen
• Soulstorm – deleted several legacy icons that were being loaded instead of the remastered icon
• Soulstorm – updated text spacing on Wargear screen to avoid description text from being cut off

Art & Animation

• Chaos – fixed cases where the Chaos Marine plasma gun and bolter models could be visible at the same time
• Chaos – Predator tank tread alignment corrected for viewing in the Army Painter using mods
• Chaos – fixed Raptor flamethrower VFX to aim correctly at the target instead of downwards
• Chaos – added visible projectiles to the Defiler and Hell Talon autocannons
• Chaos – tuned the Cultist grenade launcher animations to better match the firing speed
• Chaos – updated position of the Chaos Lord when viewed in the Winter Assault campaign menu to better align with the ground
• Chaos – updated building VFX to hide correctly when buildings are destroyed in Winter Assault
• Chaos – update the Hell Talon Biotoxin bomb VFX to avoid being applied repeatedly on units that move in and out range
• Dark Eldar – realigned Disintegrator to be held correctly on the Wargear screen
• Dark Eldar – adjusted the Torture Pit to not have persistent bodies to improve framerate
• Dark Eldar – updated the placement preview for all buildings to match the finished structure
• Eldar – realigned the Eldar Commander’s pistol placement on the Wargear screen after upgrading to the Shuriken Pistol
• Eldar – improved texture resolution of the Aspect Portal building
• Imperial Guard – added tracer VFX to the Leman Russ heavy bolters
• Imperial Guard – added new animations for the Kasrkin to better align when firing the Plasma Gun
• Imperial Guard – tuned the lighting on the muzzle flash VFX for the Basilisk to not be overly bright
• Imperial Guard – fixed misaligned animations with Heavy Weapons Team loading & firing
• Necron – updated Warriors to shoot at the correct angle when moving
• Necron – updated the Monolith attack VFX to play consistently
• Orks – updated the Big Mek to hold the correct weapons after teleporting
• Orks – fixed an animation issue that caused the Tankbustaz rockets to be invisible when moving
• Orks – updated Gorgutz’s ‘Ead ‘Unter gun to align correctly with the arms and correctly display projectiles
• Sisters of Battle – fixed purple pixels on the Shrine of the Living Saint
• Sisters of Battle – adjusted textures on the Canoness’ hand to no longer appear to be invisible when shown in the Main Menu
• Space Marines – Dreadnought animation corrections for parts of the model becoming invisible during sync kills
• Space Marines – added glowing VFX to the Plasma Generators
• Space Marines – updated bullet tracer VFX to the Tactical Marine bolters
• Space Marines – fixed the badge size on Terminator squads
• Space Marines – adjusted VFX placement on the Skull Probe when using the Librarian Word of the Emperor ability
• Tau – updated Kroot Carnivore Squad to correctly hold their weapons when firing after moving.
• Under Siege – fixed several impasse bugs on Dawn of War Campaign Mission 3 to prevent clipping through walls
• Testing Grounds – updated numerous locations where objects overlapped that was causing flickering
• Fata Morga – adjusted grass placement to improve terrain alignment
• Deadly Archeology – created new environment pieces to reduce the number of objects in the map and improve performance
• Deadly Archeology – adjusted height of some of the decorative planters to avoid flickering
• Sandstorm – reduced density of sandstorm FX to improve performance

Modding

• Hotkeys – incremented the Hotkey version to support new fixes in this patch
• Documentation – added new information about tuning environment & FX lighting
• Crash – fixed a crash that could occur when a Winter Assault campaign mod did not have “wxp_order” and/or “wxp_disorder”
• Gameplay – added support to “squad_leader_ext” to support Faith and Soul costs
• Gameplay – fixed cases where AddOns with a 0.0 second timer were not correctly handled and had longer than desired durations
• Rendering – added support to disable specific objects from casting shadows by using the “cast_shadows = 0” simvis_attribute associated with that model’s .lua file
• Mission Editor – fixed a crash that would occur when doing undo / redo after performing move or copy / paste actions
• Mission Editor – updated the Entity List to make it easier to find duplicated / overlapping objects by adding columns that show the X & Z locations and an overlap indicator to highlight likely overlapping objects. Objects that have the same transform (position and rotation) but different blueprints are not considered
• Mission Editor – added an Objects menu allowing hiding and unhiding of the selected or unselected units
• Mission Editor – added a new Decal List that shows all the decals placed in a given scenario. Decals can be selected and hidden / unhidden from the list
• Mission Editor – added support to quickly scroll between overlapping decals. When hovering over the decals using Shift+Mousewheel will allow scrolling between the decals under the pointer. Press Space to select the highlighted decal
• Mission Editor – added a toggle to show lighting volumes in the editor. It can be found in Edit > Options > Show Lighting Range and enables rendering of lighting fall of spheres showing the effective illumination range
• Mission Editor – fixed a crash that would occur when trying to Hide or Select an item on the Entity List that no longer exists
• Mission Editor – Height mode in the Object Placement tool is updated the “Adjustable” button renamed “Fixed” to better reflect how it works. An Apply Height Mode button is now added and will apply the selected “Fixed” or “Relative” height mode when clicked. Setting an object’s Height mode to Relative to Terrain no longer snaps its height to the terrain. Its current height remains the same; when moved the object will react such as to maintain this height relative to the terrain. Similarly, setting Height Mode to Fixed will not alter object’s height; when moved its height will remain fixed

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition Roadmap of Updates for 2026

Below, you’ll find the full list of updates, patches, and hotfixes that Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition has received since becoming available for purchase on August 14, 2025:

With Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition’s latest patch notes and roadmap of updates for 2026 covered, drop by our review, for our full thoughts on the game, and our console commands page, if you need an extra hand while purging xenos.

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