Final Fantasy 14 Is Crossing Over With Neon Genesis Evangelion

Square Enix has announced a collaboration with Neon Genesis Evangelion as part of Final Fantasy 14‘s next expansion, Evercold. One of the highest-profile crossovers in the MMORPG’s 13-year-old history will arrive in the form of a dedicated Final Fantasy 14 raid.

The announcement was made during the opening keynote of the 2026 Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival, held on April 24 in Anaheim, California. Producer and director Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, who leads development at Square Enix’s Creative Business Unit 3, mentioned the Neon Genesis Evangelion collaboration midway through the keynote, after revealing the encompassing Final Fantasy 14: Evercold expansion.

Final Fantasy 14: Evercold to Include 24-Player Neon Genesis Evangelion Raid

Square Enix

Titled Evangelion: Ghosts of Desire, the crossover will take the form of a multipart alliance raid series. The 24-player format has previously been used for similar licensed collaborations in the hit MMORPG, including Final Fantasy 14‘s NieR: Automata crossover, which launched as part of the Shadowbringers expansion in 2019. Square Enix is developing the new content in partnership with Khara Inc., the Tokyo-based animation studio that owns the Evangelion IP.

The collaboration will be far from the first video game foray for Khara’s hit franchise. Since 1996, nearly two dozen Neon Genesis Evangelion games have been released for PC and consoles, spanning a wide variety of genres, from platformers to dating sims. However, nearly 15 years have passed since the last such title, the PSP-exclusive Rebuild of Evangelion: Sound Impact, developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and released in September 2011. Ghosts of Desire thus marks Khara’s most significant return to the gaming space in over a decade. It is not, however, the studio’s first move into live-service games. Khara has previously licensed the franchise for several mobile titles in that space, including DeNA’s Clash of Clans-style RTS Evangelion: Catharsis of the Soul and Mobcast’s PvP battler Evangelion Battlefields, released in 2014 and 2020, respectively.

Evercold is currently targeting a January 2027 debut, which would make it the first Final Fantasy 14 expansion to launch in the first quarter of its release year. It will open a new narrative arc called the Godless Realms Saga, set on a frost-ravaged parallel world called the Fourth. The upcoming expansion is also set to introduce some significant changes to Final Fantasy 14‘s gameplay, including two new character classes, a level cap boost from 100 to 110, and a comprehensive combat system overhaul. PvP updates will also be part of the package, together with new trials to overcome, dungeons to explore, massive constructs to defeat, and allies to befriend.

Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.

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Start

Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.

Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)Start

All Final Fantasy 14 Expansions to Date

The Anaheim keynote also produced several additional announcements, including the reveal of a Nintendo Switch 2 version of Final Fantasy 14, scheduled to launch in August 2026. It will have its own, separate subscription fee, offered at a discount to existing players on other platforms. Separately, Square Enix announced that the MMORPG’s free trial will expand on April 28 to include Shadowbringers, giving newcomers access to several hundred hours of additional content at no cost. More details on the Neon Genesis Evangelion alliance raid and the rest of the Evercold expansion are expected to emerge at upcoming Fan Festival events in Berlin and Tokyo, scheduled for late July and late October 2026, respectively.

Systems

Released

August 27, 2013

ESRB

T for Teen – Language, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence

Engine

Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it’s a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine.

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