Rust Roadmap 2026: Animals, Breeding, Anticheat & Server Plans
Facepunch's official roadmap separates shipped work from longer-term direction. As of August 20, 2026, the Naval, Common Ground, and Power Trip updates are live; animals, breeding, and other ecosystem work remain planned rather than guaranteed server features.
Source of truth: Facepunch says roadmap items can move, change shape, or be cancelled. Compare this page with the official roadmap and the 12-year roadmap context before announcing a feature to players.
Current Rust update status
- Naval (February 5): Modular boats and Deep Sea content are live on PC.
- Common Ground (July 2): Apartments, rentable shops, clans, and raid-window tools shipped with the monthly wipe.
- Power Trip (August 6): Monument and power-grid changes are live; see the official changelist.
Animals, AI and breeding
Facepunch's current roadmap points toward a richer animal and AI ecosystem, including breeding-related work. It does not provide a final list of species, breeding rules, server convars, or a guaranteed release date. Avoid presenting imagined mechanics such as trait inheritance, animal pens, or new population caps as shipped facts.
For server owners, the safe preparation is operational: keep backups current, test plugins on a copy of the world, measure real CPU/RAM usage, and wait for the official changelog before changing production limits.
Anticheat and platform requirements
This one is no longer speculation. Since the March 2026 update, Rust servers can opt in to Secure mode, which requires connecting players to have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled so Easy Anti-Cheat can work at full strength. Secure servers carry a Secure tag in the server browser, and clicking one shows players exactly what is required and whether their system supports it. Facepunch's own April numbers: roughly 1 in 63 players on secure servers were cheaters versus 1 in 42 on regular servers, and over 80 percent of players already have TPM hardware while just under 60 percent have Secure Boot switched on. Sources: the March update and April update.
It stays opt-in per server: nothing forces a community server to require TPM. If you run one, weigh the cheater reduction against locking out players who have not enabled Secure Boot. Facepunch has also said a new third-party anticheat layer is planned for 2026. Players hitting connection errors on Secure servers should see our EAC error fixes guide.
RustRelay: server data streaming for owners
The April 2026 update also shipped the first piece of a browser-based live server view. RustRelay forwards all outbound packets from a Rust server to a websocket endpoint you control, enabled with three launch arguments: -relayenabled, -relayurl "https://example.com" and -relaytoken "" (the token is sent as a Bearer authorization header). Facepunch describes it as the base for a real-time and historical 3D server render in the browser, "think demos but outside of the game". Nothing is required of server owners yet; it is off unless you enable it.
What is not confirmed
A battle pass and a global Rust Mobile launch are not current PC dedicated-server features in the official roadmap source used here. Treat community posts and interview “maybes” as speculation, not a release plan or a reason to change your hosting configuration.
Monthly wipe planning
Keep your community calendar tied to the PC force-wipe cadence, then confirm the exact patch notes and server build on release day. The Rust wipe schedule guide has the next date, map-versus-blueprint explanation, and community-server options.
Safe server-admin checklist
- Back up the world before each monthly update.
- Update the server build first, then Oxide/uMod or Carbon and individual plugins.
- Publish your wipe date, blueprint policy, raid-window rules, and mod policy.
- Use the official changelog for live behavior; keep roadmap items labelled as planned until they ship.
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