Taking over the Messe Berlin for the weekend with news, panels and other activities, Final Fantasy Fan Festival Berlin 2026 is now underway. I’ll be checking in with updates and other things over the event, but we just had the opening Keynote Address. This opening contained new information about the upcoming expansion Evercold, including the first of two new Jobs coming with the update.
Starting with the extended teaser trailer (see below) and following the initial teaser at the Fan Fest in Anaheim, we were treated with a deluge of new reveals. Not only did this trailer show the arrival of the Warrior of Light, Alphinaud, and Estinien into the Fourth. The last of which immediately drop-kicked a creature into shards in one of the coolest things I’ve seen in recent game trailers.
The trailer also featured new characters, new locations and snippets of story. There wasn’t a great deal revealed about the story, with only scant whisperings of what the player will face on the Fourth. But, with the reveal of the new character came the bombastic reveal of the first new Job coming with Evercold (complete with a huge cheer from the audience).
After the trailer, we got into the meat of discussing the expansion, with Naoki Yoshida taking to the stage for the full keynote address. Dressed in the gear set of this newly revealed Job, Yoshi-P kicked off with an explanation of this dual-shield wielder.
New Job: Bastion
Main Tank role, starting at Level 90 and obtainable in Limsa Lominsa. It wields a pair of greatshields known as skyltborg—and unveiled a trailer showcasing the new job in action (see below). From the gameplay, my impression is that it’s slow and heavy, with ranged ability from the transformation of the shields into guns. It looks like it packs a punch, pun intended, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it to see what they mean when they said it has a range of curative boons.
The world of Evercold
We saw several updates about the world of Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold. Detailing how the people of the Fourth live in the skies, we got to see some of the grand airships (called Realmships) that form this world. This primarily focused on Naglfar, Realmship of Water, a beautiful water-based environ, with a huge crystal at centre of ship called Arc Crystal. It was teased that these crystals would heavily play into the narrative of Evercold, but since when has Final Fantasy not loved crystals? This area also contains Falgarthr, first revealed player town, so this realmship is definitely the first or a very early area of the game.
The key thing revealed is that Evercold will allow players more freedom to choose their route through the Main Scenario, with players having the choice of the next area they visit. They did acknowledge that this might cause significant issues with level balancing, but the cheeky sods thought of that. They’re adding a new feature called Auto Content Balancing, which will see the scaling and enemy levels adjusting to the appropriate player level as they play through dungeons in real time.
Final Fantasy XIV – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
Something that I have been far too excited for, more than most, is the release of FFXIV on Nintendo Switch 2. During the keynote address, it was revealed that it will launch on 4th August, 2026, with pre-orders starting today on Nintendo eShop. To ensure server stability, they also announced one-month free subscription period on Nintendo Switch 2. Also, they again confirmed that this version will require an additional subscription and that this subscription will be reduced for those with pre-existing subscriptions on other platforms.
Collector’s Edition
As a final big announcement for this post, Naoki Yoshida revealed the Evercold Collector’s Bundle, which includes a collection of physical items: the Evercold Special Art Box, Expertly Crafted Reaper Figure, Ethos Metal Keychain, Köttr Mini Plush, and Tapestry of the Fourth. Also included is the digital Collector’s Edition, featuring three in-game items: the Crystal Skyltborg bastion weapon, Vallhallar Odin mount, and Entreat Crystal emote. The quality of this is great, and the mount having not just a transformation but one that is THIS clean is incredible. Maybe I’m just easily pleased.
That’s all the big Evercold stuff for now (with a couple of one exceptions that really needs its own slot – please look forward to it). The thing that always strikes me about these events is that they very clearly are having so much fun with this. The jokes with each other on the stage, referencing memes and past events, their fun is infectious. I’m all for basically everything I’ve seen, and we still have so much to find out during this event and the next Fan Fest in Japan … but what did you think of the reveals?
