Elden Ring Nightreign seems to have settled into a nice little groove for itself. It caused a bit of a stir by being one of the few FromSoftware games to receive middling reviews, with the much-maligned “7/10” score getting thrown around more than usual. But now that it’s been about a year since launch, it’s clear that Elden Ring Nightreign is simply a more niche experience targeted at players with a particular affinity for FromSoft’s signature Souls combat.
As such, the game has retained a healthy playerbase over time, even if it’s not as genre-defining as something like the original Elden Ring. Elden Ring Nightreign’s value proposition was considerably bolstered this past December, too, thanks to The Forsaken Hollows DLC. The expansion, which was the game’s first(although FromSoft had released many free updates and QoL changes prior), added two new playable characters, a new Shifting Earth, and new bosses, including the iconic Artorias the Abysswalker from Dark Souls 1. These additions have been great, particularly for those who enjoy Nightreign’s build-crafting systems, but now that the dust has settled, a lot of players have only one question: when’s the next expansion going to drop?
Elden Ring Nightreign Still Hasn’t Addressed the Elephant in the Room
One huge question has surrounded Elden Ring Nightreign since its release, and it could define the future of the game’s content going forward.
Elden Ring Nightreign’s Second DLC Isn’t Confirmed
The Forsaken Hollows may have only been released in December 2025, but a lot of fans (read: yours truly) are already clamoring for an encore. The strong reception to The Forsaken Hollows seems to underscore the primary strength of Elden Ring Nightreign, that being its recontextualizing of mechanics central to Elden Ring and, in some ways, FromSoftware’s portfolio as a whole. It’s similar to what happens when you invite an ally to fight a boss alongside you in the Elden Ring base game: you might have a heavy, tank-like build, but you have to use this build differently when you have, say, a glass cannon on your side.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)
Nightreign functions similarly, its remixing of familiar gameplay tropes leading to unexpected outcomes. Put another way, Elden Ring Nightreign succeeds by offering the player a handful of variables and allowing them to interface with them with a degree of freedom, leading to unexpected outcomes. Nightreign is a roguelike, after all.
This is why more DLC for Elden Ring Nightreign is so important. Frankly, the game doesn’t have the fundamental replay value of FromSoftware’s other games—it’s not like there’s a campaign you can retry with a different build, just 30-40 minute runs with randomized gameplay factors. And at the end of the day, Nightreign is, in large part, an Elden Ring asset flip; the content of the base game just can’t provide the longevity demanded by the best games in the roguelike space.
Despite Radio Silence, We Might Still Get Another Elden Ring Nightreign DLC
In contrast to many other AAA developers, FromSoftware generally likes to undersell and overdeliver. The same can’t exactly be said for the studio’s fanbase, of course; broadly speaking, most claims about a given FromSoftware release being an industry-changing masterpiece come from players, not FromSoft itself. A particularly famous example of this can be found in the marketing for the fantastic Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, which director Hidetaka Miyazaki famously described as roughly the size of Limgrave, when it wound up being closer to half the base game’s total map size.
I bring this up because, especially as FromSoftware has exploded in mainstream popularity post-Elden Ring, it seems like the developer is leaning even further into this downplaying approach. Hype can kill a promising release, as audiences have time to get their hopes up, often to an unrealistic level, and the tide of online gaming discourse can turn in an instant. If FromSoftware were to reveal or even just confirm a second Elden Ring Nightreign expansion too soon, it could backfire, as audiences may begin to develop unfeasible expectations. Plus, if there’s too great a gap between reveal and release, opinions on this theoretical DLC could sour. Best to wait until the right moment to make such announcements.
Find all 10 pairs
Find all 10 pairs
Regular Cover ArtClean Cover Art
This reasoning aligns with the reveal-to-release pipeline for The Forsaken Hollows, which was unveiled less than a month before its launch.
In its most recent quarterly earnings report (May 2026), FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa said that “Elden Ring Nightreign performed strongly, and its DLC achieved a high attach rate,” indicating that the smaller roguelike project has at least met expectations. As a game with a lower cost of entry and a fundamentally multiplayer-oriented premise, Nightreign certainly benefits from expansions that “achieve a high attach rate,” as this means more engagement for the live-service loop. If FromSoft, Kadokawa, and Bandai Namco are all satisfied with Forsaken Hollows’ return on investment, then subsequent Nightreign development seems like a no-brainer.
FromSoftware definitely has bigger fish to fry in 2026, what with Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods still set to release this year, but a healthy, embedded live-service game like Nightreign would certainly be a feather in the company’s cap. And since an expansion on the level of The Forsaken Hollows would presumably be less resource-intensive to develop than a full game, it could serve as a sort of “side dish” for FromSoft’s 2026 lineup. Nightreign’s first anniversary is coming up this summer, and with Summer Games Fest preceding it, I wouldn’t be surprised if another add-on reared its head before too long.
