Embark Studios has confirmed that Arc Raiders will receive multiple new maps throughout 2026. Design lead Virgil Watkins shared the news in an interview with GamesRadar+, revealing that upcoming locations will range from smaller, focused areas to environments larger than anything currently in the game.
Arc Raiders hit 12 million players within a few months of its launch. Embark is now preparing its first wave of major content for the year ahead.
Roadmap Coming Soon
A content roadmap covering the next few months is in the works. Watkins said it will drop "sometime soon" and cover more than maps alone. Players can expect details on new weapons, enemies, objectives, and other additions.
Embark hasn't locked in a release schedule yet. The team is watching how players engage with the game before committing to specific timelines. Some updates will respond directly to player behavior and feedback, while others will push the game in directions the studio has planned internally.
Map Size Variety
"There are going to be multiple maps coming this year, and I think it's going to be across a spectrum of size to try to facilitate different types of gameplay," Watkins said. "So you might see some that are smaller, and you might see some that are even grander than what we've got now."
Tight corridor environments like Stella Montis could sit alongside expansive outdoor areas bigger than the current largest maps. Each map is being built to create a different type of gameplay experience rather than simply adding more space.
Current Map Dimensions
Watkins broke down the existing map dimensions for context. Spaceport is the largest by land area at roughly 1.6 by 1.4 kilometers. Buried City and Blue Gate both measure about one by one kilometer.
Blue Gate "feels huge" despite not being the biggest, Watkins noted. He called it "a fun quirk of how the layout and things came together." Different internal densities make direct comparisons tricky. Perceived size depends on layout and sightlines, not raw square footage.
Themed Content Updates
Embark isn't treating new maps as standalone drops. The studio is building each major update around a unified theme that ties together maps, enemies, loot, and mechanics.
"Of course adding a new map has its own novelty, and it's a new place to play and do that. But what else? Thematically, gameplay-wise. How do the enemies and the items and the experiences in that map all point toward something?" Watkins explained. "It's kind of getting that thematically cohesive stuff together that feels like, 'Oh, guys, the Whatever Update just came out for Arc Raiders. Let's go check that out.' That's what we're trying to template out for the coming months."
New maps will arrive with matching enemy types, exclusive loot, environmental conditions, and new mechanics that reinforce whatever theme the update is built around.
Stella Montis Template
Stella Montis, the most recent map addition, introduced rarer loot tiers, new blueprints, and the Shredder (an enemy that only spawns in this location). PC Gamer described it as "dark, dank, and more deliriously violent" than the four launch maps.
The map focuses entirely on indoor gameplay with dense hallways and locked rooms. That tight, claustrophobic layout creates tense encounters and tends to push players toward PvP conflict. Watkins confirmed the studio considers how each map's design affects player behavior during development.
"That's certainly a consideration that goes into it," he said. "When you create a dense interior that's sort of spider nest-y, it's going to evoke that, right? Certainly, the style of play, or the predominant play that's going to happen there, is a factor in that."
Strategy & Tool Changes
Future maps will force players to rethink their loadouts and strategies, not simply offer new places to explore.
"The ambition is to try to pair it with some new type of experience, whether that's the map conditions or weather conditions we put in that make the play feel different, enemy types or compositions feeling different, or we're escalating the types of loot available there," Watkins said.
He pointed to specific examples: ziplines might work differently in certain environments, while mines and noise makers could become far more useful depending on a map's layout. Constant power creep isn't the goal. Embark wants to give players reasons to approach familiar tools in new ways.
"How do we keep (not necessarily escalating all the time, but) giving you a new way of play, a new way to approach, making you make different decisions with things you've already been using in one context, and trying to use it in a different way in another context?"
Technical Limits
Server and client performance set hard boundaries on what Embark can build.
Watkins explained that there's a cap on how many players and Arc bots can exist in a map before servers start failing. Client performance adds another layer of constraints. Dam Battlegrounds already pushes those limits with its long sightlines, dense prop placement, and complex building layouts.
Beyond raw performance, the team balances pacing factors: spawn rates, enemy travel times, how fast threats collapse on different areas, drone and player density, and loot distribution.
Future Hints
Watkins didn't confirm any specific upcoming maps, but in-game content offers some clues. The world map and environmental hints point toward a settlement near the volcano and a toxic swamp area.
Players have also found traces of a "toxic swamp" map event in the game's data. These hints could represent full new maps or modifiers applied to existing locations. Embark hasn't clarified which.
Developer Vision
Embark is balancing player feedback with its own plans for the game's direction. Some updates will directly respond to how players engage with Arc Raiders, while others will push the experience forward in unexpected ways.
"Some of it is reacting to the things you're talking about here, like how players are actually engaging with the game and the things that they're doing, but a lot of it for us is trying to see how we can move the experience forward," Watkins said.
What to Expect
The 2026 roadmap should arrive soon with concrete timing and details. Embark is planning multiple maps of varying sizes, each built around a distinct theme with matching enemies, loot, and mechanics. Every update will function as a complete package rather than an isolated map drop.
The studio is building content for players who prefer close quarters tension and those who want wide open exploration alike.
