Elder Scrolls Online is ditching Chapters for a traditional seasonal model seen in live-service games such as Destiny 2 and Diablo 4. Each ESO season lasts for 90 days and introduces new zones, quests, limited-time events, and a plethora of player-focused changes and improvements.
ESO Seasons begin with Season Zero: Dawn and Dusk. It will be followed by Season 1 in the summer and Season 2 in the winter. ZeniMax Online Studios has revealed the full ESO Seasons 2026 roadmap, including details on new content and upcoming gameplay changes.
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What to expect from ESO Season Zero?
Season Zero: Dawn and Dusk’s biggest addition is the new group event zone – The Night Market. It’s a limited-time event launching on April 29, 2026. It will conclude on June 17, 2026.
In the Night Market, you can join one of three factions – The Glittering Goad, The Ruckus, and The Thousand Eyes- to complete PvE-focused quests. Expect to encounter new characters, environmental puzzles, and boss fights. Furthermore, the overall difficulty of this event zone will be higher than overland activities, and much in line with Trials and Arenas.
In Season Zero, the Dragonknight Class is getting a major visual overhaul, alongside the Two-Handed skill line and Werewolf skill line. Alongside enhanced abilities, expect improved animations, VFX, and sound.
With Seasons, ESO is adding more free content than ever, and another way to earn stuff will be through the Gold Coast Bazaar. It’s a new, permanent in-game store where you can purchase seasonal and evergreen cosmetics and consumable items by using a free-to-earn currency called Trade Bars.
One of the ways to get Trade Bars is through Tamriel Tomes, ESO’s new battle pass. It comes in three categories – free, premium, and premium + bonuses, with the latter two costing $14.99 and $29.99, respectively.
In addition to all these, Season Zero brings forth quality-of-life improvements such as free character respecs, furnishing limit increase, Challenge difficulty, PvP Veterancy, and Class Mastery Systems. There will also be new mounts at the stable masters.
What to expect from ESO Season One?
ESO Season One’s biggest additions will be the new Thieves Guild and Sheograth questlines. The Thieves Guild questline will take you back to a visually refreshed Glenumbra Zone in the Daggerfall Covenant. It will be a continuation of the original questline with some new faces and gameplay additions like the option to hide in flowerpots, but you don’t have to finish those to start the new ones.
The Daedric Prince of Madness, Sheograth, will return with a six-part, mind-bending questline in which nothing is as it seems and things get increasingly unhinged. Dogs play poker, cheese flies everywhere, someone tries to exploit Daedric Prince’s power for their own good; regular Sheograth shenanigans.
In addition to these, Season One brings a new system, an in-game event, and a 12-player Crimson Veldt Trial, a first for the base game since 2014. Sage’s Vault is a new combat-free activity taking place in between the realms, where you solve puzzles and overcome traps.
Perhaps one of the exciting additions is the High Seas of Tamriel event, which adds naval combat (we are getting Naval Combat in ESO before Elder Scrolls 6), underwater exploration, and ocean-based encounters.
Similar to Season Zero’s Dragonknight class overhaul, the Warden class gets a visual and balance update in Season One. More details should be revealed closer to Season One’s launch on July 9, 2026.
What to expect from ESO Season Two?
ESO Season Two will add one of the most-requested activities in the game – solo dungeons. Two existing dungeons, Moon Hunter Keep and March of Sacrifice, will be overhauled for solo play. There will be a higher difficulty option as well, if you prefer more challenging runs.
Another prominent addition in Season 2 will be large-scale world events in Skyrim, such as Dynamic Storms. We don’t know the extent of these events, but these gameplay-altering events will likely lead to the game’s next zone update in 2027, which is being teased as Winterhold.
The Night Market will also return in Season 2, though we don’t know if it will be the same or include new stuff. As for QoL changes, the Sorcerer class will get a visual and balance overhaul. More details should be revealed at a later date.
That’s everything coming to Elder Scrolls Online in 2026.
