Vintage Story Roadmap 2026: What’s Planned, What’s Likely, and What It Means for the Game’s Future

Vintage Story Roadmap 2026 captures the direction of the game’s next phase: long-term features, near-term priorities, and the systems likely to shape 2026.

• Vintage Story has quietly become one of the most deeply engaging survival sandbox games in the indie space: rich crafting, emergent survival mechanics, and a world shaped by exploration rather than hand-held guidance. But unlike many games that publish flashy quarterly roadmaps, Vintage Story’s development is intentional, adaptive, and aspirational — shaped by long-term vision, player feedback, and periodic updates from lead developer Tyron Madlener and the Anego Studios team.

As we approach 2026, what exactly is on the Vintage Story roadmap? In this article we’ll break down:

The official long-term roadmap

What’s actively being worked on

Likely future features

Community and developer directions

How the roadmap shapes Vintage Story beyond 2026

The Nature of the Vintage Story Roadmap

Before diving into specifics, it’s important to understand how Vintage Story’s roadmap operates.

Unlike corporate studios that publish fixed feature lists and delivery timelines, Vintage Story’s roadmap is fluid and evolving. The developers make it clear:

• The roadmap consists of ideas they’re very likely to explore — not guaranteed deliverables.

About half of development time goes to polishing existing features or adding unlisted mechanics that emerge during development.

This means the roadmap is best read as direction and intention, not a hard schedule.

What’s Officially on the Long-Term Roadmap

• The official Vintage Story roadmap page lists a broad set of systems the developers are likely to explore at some point — some closer than others. Here’s a synthesized view of those planned areas:

Crafting & Player Systems

• Expanded Crafting Mechanics – Including quenching, tempering, annealing (metalworking refinement stages).

• Woodworking, Gemcutting, Herbalism/Brewing – New production chains that deepen how tools and resources are developed.

• More Complex Food & Cooking Systems – Beyond survival necessity towards meaningful preparation and variety.

• Alternative Craft Interfaces – Replacing or augmenting the basic 3×3 grid system.

Wildlife & World Interaction

• More Refined Animal Domestication – Including livestock with climate-adapted behaviors.

• Richer Fauna and Ecosystems – Birds, schooling fish, insects, and critters that interact with the world.

• Challenging Wildlife – Threats and encounters that make survival more dynamic.

Pets.

World Generation

• Large-Scale World Patterns – Biomes and regions with distinct flora/fauna.

• Richer Caves & Possibly Rivers – Next-gen procedural terrain features.

• Procedural Dungeons – Increasing underground exploration depth.

Story & Narrative

One of Vintage Story’s signature differentiators is its lore and narrative content. The roadmap envisions:

More Story-Rich Game Content

Roughly 8 Story Chapters

Deeper NPC Interactions with meaningful quest and lore pipelines.

Game Engine & Tooling Improvements

The roadmap also extends into tooling and core capabilities:

• Modding & Modpack Support – Including better social features, bug reporting, and translation tools.

• High-Capacity Servers – Reliable multiplayer for 200+ players.

• Graphics Enhancements – Improved water, clouds, reflections, and performance.

What’s Currently Active or Near Term

Public dev updates help flesh out where progress actually is, especially as of late 2025:

Ongoing Patch & Version Work

• The Vintage Story team has been actively shipping updates to the 1.21 branch, which decodes into incremental improvements and story integration. Most patches remain dedicated to bug fixes, stability, and polish — a crucial phase for any emerging title.

Aspirational Features for 1.22

From a September 2025 discussion from the lead developer, we get a clearer peek at what might be prototyped or researched for future updates:

Rivers and Reworked Trader Outposts

Procedural Dungeons

Overhauls to Berry Bushes and Food Things

Fishing

New Mechanical Power Blocks

Item Heating Mechanics

Status Effects Systems

Quenching/Tempering/Annealing (adding risk/reward crafting progression)

• This list reads like a feature wishlist, and Tyron himself emphasizes it’s optimistic — meaning implementation isn’t guaranteed, but feasibility will be researched.

Where the Story Components Fit

• Vintage Story’s narrative content has been steadily improving with the 1.20 and 1.21 updates, focusing on expanding the depth and reach of its world’s lore. The aim is to build layered experiences that span a sequence of story chapters and distinct world regions — moving beyond simple survival loops toward exploration and discovery.

This marks a shift in how the game evolves: not just adding new survival mechanics, but expanding the game’s identity as a narrative survival RPG hybrid.

Community Insight & Developer Philosophy

The broader Vintage Story community sees the roadmap not just as feature rollout, but as a reflection of the game’s philosophy. In community discussions:

Players call for core stability, smoother foundational systems, and deeper craft chains.

Others want modding exposure, JSON optimization, and quality-of-life improvements.

There’s also a desire for more animals, breeding, and interactive world features.

Tyron and community discourse both indicate a balance: add new structures carefully while solidifying the survival and core mechanics that make Vintage Story standout.

Beyond 2026: Where Vintage Story Could Head Next

While 2026 remains a bit in flux, we can extrapolate potential broad directions:

Stronger Narrative and Adventures

• With several story chapters envisioned and procedural content on the roadmap, the lifecycle of Vintage Story could slowly morph from a pure survival sandbox toward a survival RPG experience — making each world feel truly unique.

Mechanization & Craft Depth

Systems like advanced metallurgy, mechanical power blocks, and process refinements point toward a more immersive and interconnected crafting ecosystem, where mid-game is as rich as endgame.

Environmental Simulation

• Procedural rivers, distinct biomes, dynamic wildlife, and richer ecosystems suggest a future world that feels less static and more alive — building uneven challenges and opportunities across the world.

Tooling & Multiplayer Growth

The emphasis on server capacity and mod support hints at Vintage Story becoming a platform for shared adventures, not just single-player survival.

What Won’t Happen (Likely)

While the roadmap covers deep and rich expansions, there are things fans often ask about that are unlikely in Vanilla Vintage Story based on dev philosophy:

• Futuristic technologies or modern electronics — the game is grounded in medieval-to-early-industrial thematic limits.

• Simplistic block-logic automation like redstone systems — these contrast the survival focus.

• Guaranteed timeline releases — flexibility is core to the game’s development culture.

Conclusion: Vintage Story Roadmap 2026

• Vintage Story in 2026 looks like a blend of continued polish, emerging systems, narrative depth, and ecosystem refinement — rather than a single giant feature drop.

The roadmap points toward:

✅ Experimental mechanics like rivers, procedural dungeons, and fishing

✅ Deeper crafting like tempering and heating

✅ World generation upgrades

✅ Expanded narrative content

✅ Mod support growth and server infrastructure

✨ All of this alongside ongoing stability and quality improvements that keep the game playable and immersive.

For players, 2026 may feel like the year where Vintage Story matures, adding layers of complexity to survival and exploration without abandoning the core game’s charm.

• If you want the official long-term feature list, there’s no better source than the Vintage Story roadmap page — updated directly by the developers:

🔗 Official Vintage Story Roadmap: https://www.vintagestory.at/roadmap.html