Paradox prepares for Crusader Kings 3's “biggest year yet” with Chapter 4 coming in 2025

Some plans for 2026 are already taking shape as well

Paradox Interactive

Paradox Interactive is already forging great plans for the future of Crusader Kings 3 now that the game’s Chapter 3 has come to a close: Chapter 4 is confirmed to be coming in 2025, bringing a fourth wave of expansions to the grand strategy RPG – and their themes are already decided.

“While it’s too early to give any specifics on the content, it’s safe to say that it’s likely going to be our biggest year yet,” the studio wrote in a blog post reviewing the outgoing year. 

Though Paradox did not want to mention any specifics about the DLCs for 2025, it did confirm an item on the agenda for Chapter 5 and 2026 – an expansion focused on a mercantile experience, which is currently a popular topic in the CK3 community.

“We've seen a lot of discussions about merchants lately, now, we won't be implementing them next year, but we hear you – we have some things that we want to do first, things that will make the merchant experience stronger when it eventually comes out,” Paradox wrote. “In the most likely scenario a mercantile expansion will be planned for the following chapter.”

In the first quarter of 2025, players can look forward to a large quality-of-life update coming their way for free. Among the confirmed contents of this patch are a port of automated warfare to PC – this is currently a console-only feature – and an overhaul of the court positions interface.

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Also confirmed for some point in 2025 are improvements to the legends feature from 2024’s Legends of the Dead expansion as well as more Content Creator Packs, which offer visual assets created by CK3 modders – a focus that will be maintained next year.

There are other aspects and lessons of 2024 that will be carried into the future: Paradox will be continuing with its policy of early, clear, and transparent development diaries, which have had a positive impact on the amount of timely and precise community feedback the team has received. Upcoming expansion will likely also continue the policy of tying many features to the map itself, which is something that was done with great success in 2024.

In the blog post, Paradox explained that it fulfilled some long-held ambitions in 2024, such as the introduction of the adventurer mode – something that had first been discussed for CK2 – and the deepest representation of Byzantium’s government system the studio ever put out across all of its games. It also released a new ruler lifestyle for the first time – and “hopefully not the last.”

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Crusader Kings 3 Chapter 3 will remain on sale as a discounted bundle until January 9, 2025, after which you’ll need to grab the DLCs from 2024 separately or purchase the big Collection Bundle – the good news is that this will get an improved discount of 20% (up from 10%) starting on December 19, 2024.