New livestream from Zenimax, new information about Elder Scrolls Online in 2026. The focus was, of course, on the soon-to-start season 0. However, there was also a look at upcoming content that will land on the servers later. MeinMMO summarizes the most important points about the future of ESO.
What news do we have now? After the big presentation of Season 0 in January 2026, the most recent Twitch livestream from the developers of Elder Scrolls Online on March 31 went into more detail, not only regarding the contents of the new season but also beyond that.
The focus was on features such as the Night Market, the new solo dungeons, a comeback from Skyrim, and planned high-seas battles. Thanks to a Q&A session that took place beforehand, we were also able to ask the developers some questions. Their answers accompany our summary of the most important news from the stream. Let’s get started!
What do I need to know about Season 0? Roadmap for April 2026
- Season 0 starts on April 2 with an anniversary event that will run until April 15.
- On April 13, Update 50 will land on the public test server.
- From April 20 to April 27, the new Retribution campaign in Cyrodiil will take place.
- From April 22 to June 17, two new campaigns of the Golden Initiatives will be active, focusing on the preparation for the Night Market and activities at the Night Market.
- The Night Market opens from April 29 to June 17.
- On June 2, ESO will come to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere.
- From June 24 to July 8, expect the Zeal of Zenithar event.
- Season 1 and Update 51 will follow in summer/fall, Season 2 and Update 52 are planned for fall/winter.
What is behind the Night Market?
The first event zone of ESO is expected to be open for seven weeks during Season 0, presenting particularly challenging encounters. Later in the year, the Night Market will reopen with a fresh twist. Depending on community feedback, a permanent availability is also possible.
The Night Market consists of 3 districts that are supposed to offer different activities – such as puzzles, roaming raid-level leaders, typical world bosses, quests, races, and more. Additionally, you can expect 3 NPC factions there. You must decide which of the factions you want to serve:
- Behind Ruckus is a thug faction that relies on the law of the stronger.
- The Shining Ambition aims to accumulate as much wealth as possible with its auctions and stalls.
- The Thousand Eyes, which includes the small and insignificant but also one of the oldest factions in the Elder Scrolls universe.
Your choice of faction decides your rewards that you can earn in the event zone. Your actions and achievements will also contribute to the overall ranking of your faction: At the end of the event, special loot awaits based on your faction’s overall performance.
Through later comebacks of the event, players should have the opportunity to complete the content gradually for all 3 factions, thus receiving the respective faction rewards and experiencing the associated stories.
In each of the 3 districts, you will find a corresponding relic that you can unlock for your character. This will open up additional areas of the zone that were previously inaccessible. The rewards of the event include temporary buffs, cosmetics, and a new home named Night Camp.
The multi-story housing reward already awaits you when you have completed the beginner-friendly introduction quest from the Night Market. It offers a secured treasury for your riches. However, for the rewards of the most challenging content of the event, you should find a group, as the difficulty in the zone is expected to be high.
What to expect in 2026 in Elder Scrolls Online, you will also find out in the following video. Also, feel free to visit our MeinMMO channel on YouTube – there we delve deep into the genre of MMORPGs.
New Difficulty Level for the Open World
Speaking of difficulty: The challenge difficulty for the open world of ESO was announced by the developers at the beginning of the year, and now there are further details about it. This new mode is intended to be an option for players who want to adjust their gameplay experience while questing or in dungeons and open dungeons.
Instanced content such as trials, the Endless Archive, dungeons, or the Night Market cannot be changed through the challenge difficulty option. But what does the option do exactly?
You can choose from 4 different difficulty levels, influencing how much damage you take or deal. Depending on your choice, you will receive a bonus for experience gained and gold earned.
With your collected feedback in mind, the developers want to further adjust and expand this mode in the future. New monster abilities, achievements, or additional rewards are on the ideas list. The option is not intended to affect interaction in the world – the choice is character-specific.
Comprehensive Expansion of the Thieves Guild
With the seasons, ESO is expected to receive regular new content where stories and characters, as well as your choices, will play an important role, and where exploring atmospheric regions is important. They plan to combine this with familiar content that will receive a new twist.
An example of this is the Thieves Guild, whose story will continue in the modernized Glenumbra (you can probably jump right in without having to finish the old story). In sneaking, players will have more opportunities to hide or eliminate enemies stealthily (keyword: sleep powder). As a reward, a mythical item that can be enhanced over time awaits you.
With the Vault of Scholars, the developers presented another new feature for Season 1, which is connected to the new Thieves Guild content. There, the scholar Voernet keeps his most valuable possessions.
Your task: Earn so-called nowhere keys through activities and other sources and master the randomly combined rooms of the 3 wings of the vault. It’s not about your damage output, but about overcoming traps and solving puzzles. A checkpoint system is supposed to prevent frustration.
You can also approach the content as a group and combine your collected keys to tackle more rooms in the vault at once. But solo runs are also possible if you prefer to face the challenges and skill tests alone.
New content for lore enthusiasts and story lovers
A comeback with Season 1 is Sheogorath, who is at the center of a new quest series. Sheo wants to live as a mortal for a while and consequently stumbles from one catastrophe to another in Tamriel. Apparently, a cheese festival plays an important role in this.
With the Favours, the developers are bringing a new variant of daily quests to Tamriel. They are connected to specific characters and guilds and provide you with activities all over the world. Each favour is supposed to tell a corresponding, ongoing story.
Whenever you fulfill a favour, you receive a letter that continues the story of the respective character or guild. At the end of a story arc, a special reward is waiting, which is also supposed to be closely tied to the character or guild. The developers want to bring back characters that you might have lost track of over the years (like Holgunn One-Eye).
In the future, the Favors will be accompanied by the new feature of Rumors. This involves optional scavenger hunts through Tamriel, aimed primarily at interested story fans: You stumble upon a rumor, follow it, find possible clues, and collect them in a journal.
There will be no quest indicators or other visual cues to assist you while browsing. You will need to figure out where you need to go and whom you should talk to in order to track down the story behind the rumor. The developers compare this gaming experience to the original Morrowind, as your wits are also required there.
High Seas Battles and Solo Dungeons
When it was announced at the beginning of the year that the ESO team would aim for more experimentation in the future, one project sounded particularly wild: High Seas Battles. In the new livestream, the developers explained for the first time what exactly lies behind this new feature.
You can expect an event-based content that will bring naval battle elements, explorations beneath the surface of the sea, and exciting encounters under a diving helmet. Examples mentioned by the team include ship battles, deep-sea fishing, and puzzles as well as engagements on the ocean floor. The content is intended to cater to soloists, groups, and pirates alike.
However, it is not meant that every Tamriel hero will get their own ship, set sail, live out their pirate career, and plunder the ships of other players or NPCs.
Solo Dungeons are meant for lone wolves. These are revamped versions of previously released dungeons that you can explore either alone or with your NPC companions.
The following two Solo Dungeons will be available with the introduction of the content:
- Moonhunter Keep
- March of Sacrifice
The focus of the dungeons is on experiencing the respective content and its story at a leisurely pace and at your own speed. However, there is also an option to adjust the difficulty level of the Solo Dungeons upwards. Additional Solo Dungeons are expected to follow over time, but probably not before 2027.
The Return to Skyrim
The last season of 2026 brings Elder Scrolls fans back to Skyrim aka Tamriel. For the revamped version of the iconic region, the developers promise a very special gameplay experience, where the new dynamic events will play an important role.
Fans of Elder Scrolls V should be able to visit many iconic places from Tamriel again – similar to the ESO adaptations of Morrowind and Oblivion. However, there will also be enough new content to keep the experience fresh – after all, hundreds of years lie between the events of Elder Scrolls Online and Skyrim.
What else do the developers reveal?
Below, we summarize some additional info nuggets that wouldn’t fill a section of their own:
- With Season 0, there will be a further Cyrodiil test campaign, during which the developers want to try out various detail adjustments for area attacks or healing.
- At the end of Season 0, there will be a new reward system for Cyrodiil, the Imperial City, and the battlefields. By collecting alliance points and gained experience, you will rank up and receive titles, perks, styles, and more. Every 6 months, the rewards for PvP will rotate, ensuring there’s always something to earn.
- Every class will receive a new mastery as a skill line, which will primarily apply when you are not accessing subclasses. The available passive skills there should strengthen the respective roles of the class.
- The developers are planning to implement dynamically world events with Season 1. They can occur anywhere, scale with the number of participating players, and unfold in multiple stages. Sometimes you will have to save endangered animals or defend a farm that is being attacked. Or you might need to take out a dangerous vampire. With later seasons, the feature is set to expand.
- The developers are currently working on a completely new zone, which will heavily focus on exploration and discoveries. When this will land on the servers is currently unclear.
- At some point in 2026, a new 12-player trial called Crimson Steppe will go live. As promised at the beginning of the year, this (like all other new content) will land freely in the base game of ESO, which hasn’t happened with a trial in the last 12 years. A hard mode for the regular enemies of the raid is also new.
- The work on crossplay and cross-progression is ongoing but will probably not be finished until next year. To ensure a satisfactory gaming experience for all players through both features, the developers need to address all areas of the MMORPG.
- The developers are working on an official version of guild housing.
- With upcoming updates, there will continue to be detail improvements aimed at enhancing aspects like comfort or quality of life in the game. For Update 50, for example, around 10 optimizations are planned, which will soon be presented in detail. One example: A Golden Initiative aimed at characters below level 20 to guide them more.
In the coming weeks and months, there will be a whole series of articles where the developers want to go into detail about the individual features and updates. MeinMMO will keep you updated on the most exciting new features in ESO, of course. With the new season, there will also be a new form of monetization: The payment model of Elder Scrolls Online in 2026: What does the new Battle Pass bring and what happens to ESO Plus?
