RuneScape is getting a proper numbered sequel. At RuneFest 2026, Jagex announced a fourth RuneScape MMO — currently going by the working title RS4, though most people are already calling it RuneScape 4. It’s the first numbered follow-up since RuneScape 3 arrived in 2013, and it’s being built in Unreal Engine.
The announcement came with a brief CGI teaser showing what PC Gamer calls a “real Dragon Quest-looking medieval town” in a verdant valley beneath floating islands, an adventurer riding a dragon coming under attack by a three-headed dragon, and a wizard watching from below — before ending with the wizard welcoming a new adventurer to the city. Jagex says RS4 is in early development with its own dedicated team, that it’s still “a few years away,” and that the studio isn’t ready to talk about platforms yet.
From Dragonwilds Expansion to Full Sequel
The most interesting part of the story is how RuneScape 4 came to be. It didn’t start out as a full game at all: it began as an expansion for RuneScape: Dragonwilds, Jagex’s Unreal Engine 5 survival game, reportedly planned for 2027. As MMORPG.com tells it, a Jagex developer said playtesters kept asking for a more traditional, MMO take on the survival game’s setting and aesthetic — and the project grew into a full sequel. Its story picks up years after Dragonwilds and starts in the same region, Ashenfall.
PC Gamer describes the teaser’s art style as a hybrid of the latest Jagex MMO — RuneScape 3 — and the ascendant Old School RuneScape based on the series’ 2000s heyday.
The RuneScape Family Keeps Growing
Jagex maps the numbered releases like this: the original RuneScape launched in 2001, RuneScape 2 arrived in 2004 and introduced full 3D rendering — the era Old School RuneScape is based on — and RuneScape 3 overhauled the art and systems in 2013. RuneScape 3, Old School RuneScape and Dragonwilds will all keep running alongside the new game.
What we don’t know yet is just as notable: how monetization will work, whether any progress carries over from RuneScape 3, or which platforms the MMO will target. RuneFest wasn’t done there, though — Jagex also confirmed a RuneScape animated show is on the way, in partnership with content creator MoistCr1TiKaL and Lyrical Media.