ARK 2 Release Date and Dedicated Servers: What Is Confirmed
Short answer. ARK 2 has no release date. Studio Wildcard's current window is 2028, announced in December 2025 as the latest of several delays since the game was revealed in December 2020. Before it, ARK: Survival Ascended gets its planned content updates, ending with the Legacy of Santiago expansion in the fourth quarter of 2027. Wildcard has said nothing yet about how ARK 2 servers will work, so no host can offer ARK 2 servers today.
What Is Confirmed About ARK 2
| Question | Answer, as of October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Studio Wildcard, the studio behind ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended |
| Revealed | December 2020, at The Game Awards, with Vin Diesel as Santiago |
| Release window | 2028, announced on 22 December 2025. No day, month or quarter |
| Platforms announced | Xbox Series X|S and PC, with Xbox Game Pass from launch |
| What comes first | Content updates for ARK: Survival Ascended through 2026 and 2027, ending with the Legacy of Santiago expansion in Q4 2027 |
| Dedicated servers | Not announced |
The 2028 window was reported on 22 December 2025, with Wildcard laying out seven major updates for ARK: Survival Ascended over the following two years before the sequel. Wildcard's co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz explained the decision in the announcement; the sequel's date has moved several times since 2020, so treat 2028 as a window, not a promise.
Will ARK 2 Have Dedicated Servers?
Wildcard has not said. Both earlier ARK games shipped with a dedicated server that players could run themselves or rent: ARK: Survival Evolved as Steam app 376030 and ARK: Survival Ascended as 2430930. That is the series' history, not an announcement about ARK 2, and nothing has been published about ARK 2's server software, player limits or console access to servers.
Until Wildcard publishes that, any "ARK 2 server" on sale is a promise about software nobody outside the studio has. This page will say what is confirmed once something is.
The ARK You Can Host Today
The current ARK with dedicated servers and an active roadmap is ARK: Survival Ascended. It is also the game Legacy of Santiago lands in, the expansion named after ARK 2's lead character, so an ASA server is where that story continues until 2028.
- ARK: Survival Ascended dedicated server setup
- ARK: Survival Ascended DLC and update roadmap
- ASA crossplay for PC, PS5 and Xbox
Want an ARK server now? Supercraft ARK: Survival Ascended servers run the current ARK around the clock, for PC and, with crossplay on, PS5 and Xbox players. For the source of the 2028 window, see the December 2025 report on the delay.