Valheim Leaves Early Access on 9 September With the Deep North

Valheim 1.0
The Deep North Arrives

Author:

Watty
Category:

General Gaming
Date:

Sep 1, 2026

A Valheim longship under sail on open water beneath a bright sky

On 9 September, Valheim leaves early access. After five and a half years, a game that was supposed to be a small Viking survival project and instead sold tens of millions of copies is finally calling itself finished.

It launched into early access on 2 February 2021 and became the story of that year almost immediately. What is notable is that Iron Gate never rushed the back half. Hearth and Home, Mistlands and Ashlands each arrived when they arrived, and the studio absorbed a lot of impatience rather than shipping thin updates to keep a schedule. The 1.0 release is the end of that road.

The Deep North

The launch update is the Deep North, the frozen biome that has sat greyed out at the top of everyone's map since day one, and it is the final biome in the base game. It brings new enemies, new weapons and new build pieces with it. If you have a world you abandoned after Ashlands, this is the update that gives it somewhere left to go.

"The Deep North has been visible and unreachable on every Valheim map since 2021. On 9 September it stops being scenery."

The Exiles

Crossplay, and what it costs

1.0 adds full crossplay, and it lands on PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2. For a co-op game that is the single most useful feature in the patch, because the usual reason a group never gets a Valheim server going is that two people are on the wrong box.

The price rises to $29.99 at launch. If you already own it from early access you are not paying again, your copy simply updates. So if Valheim has been sitting in your library since 2021 gathering dust, the whole thing including the new biome is already yours.

Why we are flagging it

Most of what we cover is a spaceship of one kind or another, but Valheim is a co-op game with a ten player cap, no subscription, and a difficulty curve that rewards a group that plans. That is squarely the sort of thing this community exists for. We are not announcing anything, but if you fancy sailing north with company, say so in the Discord and see who bites.

Further reading: Valheim on Steam | GamesRadar: Valheim 1.0 launches in September