Paradox show off their mysterious ass to tease Crusader Kings 3’s 2026 expansions

I can’t believe it either, your majesty. While outlining their plans for Crusader Kings 3 in the new year, Paradox have teased a major expansion by turning around and revealing a work-in-progress donkey. They’ve also spilled the beans on some of the tweaks coming with yet another “realm maintenance” update as part of this year-end dev diary.

Following 2025’s chapter four additions, which culminated with October’s All Under Heaven DLC extending the courtly strategising into medieval China, Japan and Southeast Asia, 2026 will be the year of chapter five. As has become the norm, that means two more major expansions.

What’re they about? Well, here’s the main hint Paradox are offering, at least when it comes to one of the pair:

Either your next kingdom’s Far Far Away, or something involving trading/farming is afoot. “If 2025 was the year of going wide (Nomads, all of Asia) then 2026 will be a year of depth,” the studio scrawled above their ass. “We’re going to go back and revisit some parts of the game that’ll deepen the overall game experience. Just like how Roads to Power set the stage for All Under Heaven, the All Under Heaven expansion is setting the stage for this future content. There are some central areas of the game that we’ve been itching to improve for a long, long time now.”

Alongside those add-ons, 2026’ll see CK3 get another free “realm maintenance” update aimed at revamping existing areas of the game or enacting less urgent changes based on player feedback. This update’s being aimed at a release “early in the second quarter of the year”. Among its tweaks will be a retooling of accolades to make them more rewarding and easier to pass on to a knight’s squire, while attributes being made clearer and there’ll be “more agency” around earning them. Also, Paradox wrote, “Glory will get a bit of a revamp, so it is no longer lost when the knights die in battle (it’s their job after all, and dying in battle can be quite glorious in these times…).”

The studio then went off to show off how some of the interfaces around these changes will look, with some panels showing off more in-depth visualisation for the various story cycles your ruler can be wrapped up in. If you get a pet cat or dog, there’ll also now be a tab where you can read a bio for them, detailing facts like their age, fur colour, and whether they’re a good boy.

None of the pet info slides shown off suggest you can get a pet donkey once the mystery ass expansion drops, but there’s still plenty of time for that to be rectified once the calendar flips to next year.