Final Fantasy 14 players finally know when the deep freeze arrives. At the Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival 2026 in Japan, Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida took the stage for the event’s keynote and revealed the official release date for the game’s upcoming Evercold expansion — alongside a brand-new job and a first proper look at some of its new areas.
February 23, 2027
“FINAL FANTASY XIV: Evercold is scheduled to launch on Tuesday, February 23, 2027! Pre-order starting Wednesday, November 4, 2026 to be eligible for early access beginning Friday, February 19, 2027!” the official Final Fantasy 14 account announced. As Shacknews notes, that’s a slight delay from the initial January 2027 release window Square Enix had previously put forward — but it comes with a concrete date, a pre-order window that opens in under two weeks, and four days of early access for pre-orderers.
Meet the Zephyr
Alongside the new release date, Yoshida unveiled the expansion’s next new job: the Zephyr, a ranged DPS character who fights with a crossbow and a trusty avian companion. The keynote also treated players to never-before-seen footage of the expansion in motion — and if you needed one more reason to believe this is a Final Fantasy 14 keynote, the new job literally shoots people with a crossbow while a bird does the rest.
Sessyrmnir, the Realmship of Earth
Yoshida also showed off some of Evercold’s new characters and areas, including Sessyrmnir, the Realmship of Earth — described as one of five massive airships, and one so big that its surface is practically a world in itself, complete with settlements and fields. It’s the kind of scale the expansion’s name increasingly seems to promise. Shacknews notes that Yoshida’s keynote was still ongoing at the time of writing, so Evercold’s full reveal weekend likely has more to show.
Where You’ll Play It
Evercold is set to come to all of Final Fantasy 14 Online’s platforms when it launches — including, as Shacknews points out, the newly released Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game. The expansion’s arrival caps a rough-and-tumble stretch for Square Enix’s MMO, which spent nearly 24 hours locked offline last week thanks to a wave of PHP vulnerabilities — the servers came back, the free day was handed out, and now the road map points squarely at February. Pre-orders open November 4; early access begins February 19.