Borderlands 4 launched last year with many, myself included, praising the game’s combat and open world, but criticizing a myriad of technical problems and performance issues. Since then, Gearbox has continued to update the game, and the studio has a big roadmap planned for 2026 that includes level cap increases, cross saves, and more.
On January 29, Gearbox pushed out a new major update for Borderlands 4 across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. This update adds a new photo mode, something people have been asking about for a bit now. Finally, you can take gorgeous cinematic images of yourself blasting apart rippers and aliens with a four-barreled assault rifle. Alongside that new feature came a long list of various tweaks, changes, and fixes as you might expect from a big update for a modern game in 2026. The bigger news, however, is what’s coming to Borderlands 4 over the next few months.
In a blog post, Gearbox outlined its roadmap for 2026, and it includes some previously teased features as well as some new additions that should make any Borderlands 4 player happy. First, Gearbox reconfirmed that Pearlescents, a higher loot rarity level seen in past games, would be added to Borderlands 4 when the game’s first expansion, “Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned,” arrives in March. And you won’t have to buy the DLC to start finding these rarer pieces of loot once they’ve been added to the looter shooter in an upcoming update. This is also when the game’s first new Vault Hunter, C4SH, will be added.
The biggest news from Borderlands 4‘s 2026 roadmap
Meanwhile, Gearbox confirmed that it is working on three highly requested features for Borderlands 4. The studio didn’t share release dates or windows for when to expect these three features in its new roadmap, but they will arrive in 2026.
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Level cap increases are coming in future updates for “all players.” Gearbox added that it looks “forward to seeing even more build variety and interactions made possible by the additional skill points!”
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Cross-platform saves will be added later this year, allowing players to bounce between platforms without having to restart a new character. Hopefully Gearbox has plans for people like me who have high-level characters on two different platforms.
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Shared world progression between characters is also coming. Gearbox is going to add an option in a future patch that will let you share all your open-world progression, like extra backpack slots, discovered Vault Fragments, and vehicle unlocks, across all your characters. I do hope this is optional, as I’d like to return to Borderlands 4 one day and be able to start all over with a new playthrough and not inherit all the upgrades I unlocked before.
Besides all that, Gearbox has also promised more free events. Though if they are anything like the not-so-great Halloween event from last year, I’m not sure how excited I am about that. Also coming in 2026 to Borderlands 4 is more endgame content, including a new raid boss and a super-hard-to-complete Takedown mission in Q2 2026. (This was previously teased for a Q4 release, so it appears to have been moved up, which is nice.) Gearbox says it’s working on “additional endgame activities that’ll add a new layer of challenge and mastery to existing content.”
So Borderlands 4 isn’t “dead” as so many on the internet like to claim. The real question is whether all this new content and free updates will arrive on time and be worth the wait. For now, I’m going to go take a cool screenshot of me shooting Claptrap with a rocket launcher using that new photo mode.
